GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 650

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 650, which comes with a clock speed of 1058 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 384 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 650 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (525%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 should be a lot (about 292%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25216 (292%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12608 (292%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.