GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which features a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory speed of 1100 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4670 1GB should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 122%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (122%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB will be a little bit (approximately 11%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (11%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.