GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 540 MHz. The DDR2 memory works at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which features a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

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 card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.