GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be a lot (more or less 317%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27360 (317%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10080 (233%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.