GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which has core speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		50 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB is much (about 44%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is superior to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 200 (4%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the maximum fill rate.