GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 878%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75840 (878%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 552%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.