GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 450% faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall, because of its greater data rate. (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 (more or less 682%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, and very much so. (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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported 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 must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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 maximum fill rate.