GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (110%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be a lot (approximately 233%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25200 (233%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 167%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (167%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.