GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 336 SPUs along with 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 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 113 Watts (240%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (800%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be a lot (more or less 338%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29160 (338%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17280 (400%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.