GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which comes with core clock speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 118 Watts (251%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (approximately 1568%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 135488 (1568%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (about 1568%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 67744 (1568%)

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 past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.