GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which has a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 160 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GTS will be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be quite a bit (about 80%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is superior to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (80%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.