GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (approximately 483%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (about 567%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24480 (567%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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