GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB will be much (approximately 78%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (78%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should be a little bit (about 19%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (19%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one 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 this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.