GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which comes with core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 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 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 611%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66000 (611%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (approximately 256%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13800 (256%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.