GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450, which comes with clock speeds of 783 MHz on the GPU, and 902 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 450 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 35328 (158%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be quite a bit (more or less 190%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		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 a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.