GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 197 Watts (419%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179584 (1403%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (more or less 472%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40768 (472%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32736 (758%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.