GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare that to the Geforce GTX 690, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 253 Watts (538%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 690 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 362112 (1617%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be quite a bit (more or less 2611%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 225600 (2611%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54240 (1256%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 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 clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.