GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 197 Watts (419%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179584 (1403%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 472%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40768 (472%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be a lot (more or less 758%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.