GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 570, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 732 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 950 MHz on this specific card. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (366%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 570 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129600 (579%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (more or less 408%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35280 (408%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be much (more or less 578%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (578%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.