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GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GTS comes with core clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 1100 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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 superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (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 much (more or less 122%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 1GB is the winner, but not by far. (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

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GeForce 8600 GTS

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Radeon HD 4670 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 8600 GTS	Radeon HD 4670 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	April 2007	Sep 10, 2008
Code Name	G84	RV730 XT
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	675 MHz	750 MHz
Memory Speed	2000 MHz	2200 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	75 watts	70 watts
Bandwidth	32000 MB/sec	35200 MB/sec
Texel Rate	10800 Mtexels/sec	24000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	5400 Mpixels/sec	6000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	16	32
Render Output Units	8	8
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2
Bus Width	128-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	80 nm	55 nm
Transistors	289 million	514 million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16, AGP 8x
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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