GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 160 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is a lot (about 80%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be quite a bit (more or less 80%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (80%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.