GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450, which has a clock frequency of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 902 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be much (approximately 190%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16416 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.