GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 470, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 837 MHz on this card. It features 448 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 40 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 168 Watts (357%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 111520 (498%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be a lot (approximately 293%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25352 (293%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.