GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which features GPU core speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 850 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 336 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be 750% faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (750%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be quite a bit (about 321%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27760 (321%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (about 381%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.