GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 118 Watts (251%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (1650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (approximately 1568%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 135488 (1568%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be quite a bit (approximately 1568%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.