GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450, which comes with GPU clock speed of 783 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 902 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 35328 (158%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a lot (more or less 190%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16416 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8208 (190%)

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 transferred past 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 RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics 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 the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends 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.