GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970, which has clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 98 Watts (209%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970 should be 900% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (about 1164%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100560 (1164%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 62880 (1456%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.