GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, which has clock speeds of 540 MHz on the GPU, and 700 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (75%)

Texel Rate

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

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at full screen 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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.