GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Geforce GTX 670

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 670, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (262%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 670 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (757%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 will be a lot (more or less 1086%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93840 (1086%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 670 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (578%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.