GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (approximately 483%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (approximately 567%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.