GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 560

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 560, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 810 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1001 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 560 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96128 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is much (more or less 320%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34560 (320%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20520 (380%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output 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 reach the maximum fill rate.