GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which has GPU core speed of 550 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should be a small bit (about 2%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 160 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (2%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.