GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (approximately 483%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is quite a bit (about 567%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.