GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, 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 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (450%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (approximately 682%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73680 (682%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (more or less 421%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22760 (421%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.