GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be much (approximately 178%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (178%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1680 (39%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.