GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Geforce GTX 780

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 780, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 863 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 192 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 780 will be 2153% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275584 (2153%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 is much (about 1818%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 157056 (1818%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 is much (about 859%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37104 (859%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.