GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (about 483%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (more or less 567%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.