GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 8800 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (123%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB will be a lot (approximately 289%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (122%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.