GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 comes with a clock frequency of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 460, which comes with a clock frequency of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 336 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTX 460 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2	GeForce GTX 460
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	April 2007	July 2010
Code Name	G84	GF104
Fab Process	80 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16
Memory	512 MB	768 MB
Core Speed	540 MHz	675 MHz
Shader Speed	1180 MHz	1350 MHz
Memory Speed	400 MHz (800 MHz effective)	900 MHz (3600 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	32	336
Texture Mapping Units	16	56
Render Output Units	8	24
Bus Type	DDR2	GDDR5
Bus Width	128-bit	192-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	47 watts	150 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	12800 MB/sec	86400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8640 Mtexels/sec	37800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4320 Mpixels/sec	16200 Mpixels/sec

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 in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.