GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specs to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with core speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (315%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 680 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 169856 (758%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (approximately 1390%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 120128 (1390%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27872 (645%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.