GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (110%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is a lot (more or less 233%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25200 (233%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is a lot (approximately 167%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (167%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.