GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4670 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB should be much (approximately 178%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (178%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB is a lot (approximately 39%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1680 (39%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.