GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6770, which features a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 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 6770		108 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6770 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 is a lot (approximately 317%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27360 (317%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.