GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 570, which has a clock speed of 732 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also makes use of a 320-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 is 375% faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120000 (375%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be much (more or less 307%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33120 (307%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (about 442%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23880 (442%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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