GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs GeForce 8800 GS

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8800 GS, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (123%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GS should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GS will be a lot (more or less 206%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (206%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GS is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2280 (53%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.