GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce 8600 GTS

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 8600 GTS, which features a clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 80 nm design. It is made up 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 GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (43%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be quite a bit (approximately 25%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2160 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is a lot (approximately 25%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1080 (25%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.