GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Geforce GTX 780

Intro

Compare all that to the Geforce GTX 780, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 863 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 192 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 265984 (1187%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 should be a lot (approximately 1818%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 157056 (1818%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 780 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.