GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GTS comes with a core clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM set to run at 1100 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.