GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (approximately 552%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59600 (552%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20200 (374%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.