GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce RTX 3090

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce RTX 3090, which uses a 8 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1395 MHz. The GDDR6X RAM is set to run at a speed of 1219 MHz on this card. It features 10496 SPUs along with 328 Texture Address Units and 112 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce RTX 3090		350 Watts
	Difference: 303 Watts (645%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3090, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		958668 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 945868 (7390%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3090 should be a lot (approximately 5196%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 448920 (5196%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3090 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 151920 (3517%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.