GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 850 MHz on this particular card. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (240%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 237%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (237%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be quite a bit (about 285%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15400 (285%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.