GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with a clock speed of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131392 (1027%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (approximately 807%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69760 (807%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (approximately 444%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (444%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.