GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450, which has core clock speeds of 783 MHz on the GPU, and 902 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is 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 running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.