GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 540 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 700 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 32 Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (75%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at AF. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at anti-aliasing, and be capable of handling the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.