GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 480, which has clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 924 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 164608 (1286%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (about 386%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33360 (386%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is quite a bit (approximately 678%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29280 (678%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.