GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which has core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 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 DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (750%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be much (approximately 321%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27760 (321%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be quite a bit (more or less 381%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.