GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GT 450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 790 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 144 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is 200% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should be quite a bit (about 76%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is much (approximately 251%) better 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 GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13560 (251%)

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 over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.