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

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units 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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically be a small bit superior to 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 a lot (more or less 44%) faster with regards to AF 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

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be a bit (about 4%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.