GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which features clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (319%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (about 789%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68160 (789%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14880 (344%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.