In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 8670D are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3.

The Radeon HD 8670D has a 304 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the 8600 GT. This results in the Radeon HD 8670D providing 11.7 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The Radeon HD 8670D has a 304 MHz higher core clock speed than the 8600 GT and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the Radeon HD 8670D providing 2.5 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Radeon HD 8670D was released over three years more recently than the 8600 GT, and so the Radeon HD 8670D is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the 8600 GT when running the latest games.

The 8600 GT has 512 MB video memory, but the Radeon HD 8670D does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The Radeon HD 8670D has 384 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32. However, the actual shader performance of the Radeon HD 8670D is 211 and the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43. The Radeon HD 8670D having 168 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the Radeon HD 8670D delivers a slightly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the 8600 GT.

The Radeon HD 8670D transistor size technology is 48 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 8600 GT. This means that the Radeon HD 8670D is expected to run much cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 8600 GT.

The Radeon HD 8670D requires 100 Watts to run and the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT, but we do not have a recommended PSU wattage for the Radeon HD 8670D. The Radeon HD 8670D requires 54 Watts more than the 8600 GT to run. The difference is significant enough that the Radeon HD 8670D may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the 8600 GT.