GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 650

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (257%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 should be quite a bit (more or less 292%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25216 (292%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.