GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with core clock speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 837 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 448 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 40 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (187%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 101920 (319%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is much (about 215%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23192 (215%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (more or less 350%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18880 (350%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.