GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 540 MHz. The DDR2 memory is set to run at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 6870 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2	Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	April 2007	October 2010
Code Name	G84	Barts XT
Fab Process	80 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	540 MHz	900 MHz
Shader Speed	1180 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	400 MHz (800 MHz effective)	1050 MHz (4200 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	32	1120
Texture Mapping Units	16	56
Render Output Units	8	32
Bus Type	DDR2	GDDR5
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	47 watts	151 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	12800 MB/sec	134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8640 Mtexels/sec	50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4320 Mpixels/sec	28800 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.