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GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

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

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM. 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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4670 1GB should perform a small bit faster than 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 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

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB is a small bit (more or less 11%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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