GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6770, which comes with a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6770 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 will be quite a bit (more or less 233%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.