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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 540 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 47 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 140 Watts
Difference: 93 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 will be 1027% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 144192 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 131392 (1027%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (about 807%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 69760 (807%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (more or less 444%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

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GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 GeForce GTX 660
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year April 2007 September 2012
Code Name G84 GK106
Memory 512 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 980 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 6008 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 140 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 144192 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 78400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 23520 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 960
Texture Mapping Units 16 80
Render Output Units 8 24
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 192-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 28 nm
Transistors 289 million 2540 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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