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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 540 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 700 MHz on this specific card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU core speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 47 Watts
Radeon HD 6970 250 Watts
Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 22400 MB/sec
Difference: 153600 (686%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (more or less 878%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 75840 (878%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (about 552%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 23840 (552%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 December 2010
Code Name G84 Cayman XT
Memory 256 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 880 MHz
Memory Speed 1400 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 22400 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 28160 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 1536
Texture Mapping Units 16 96
Render Output Units 8 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 40 nm
Transistors 289 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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