GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should be 320% faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (320%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (more or less 211%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (211%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8040 (149%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.