GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 is 614% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (614%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (about 715%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61760 (715%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (approximately 493%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21280 (493%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.