GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which has clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 288 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (386%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is much (approximately 261%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22560 (261%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16480 (381%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.