GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 878%) better at texture 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, by far. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.