GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 1506 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 2000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 1152 SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (155%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 183808 (1436%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be much (more or less 1155%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99792 (1155%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 67968 (1573%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.