GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory set to run at 1100 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4670 1GB should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB is much (more or less 122%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (122%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 1GB is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (11%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.