GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with core 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 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 168 Watts (357%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 is 946% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121120 (946%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (more or less 293%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25352 (293%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be quite a bit (more or less 462%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19960 (462%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.