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

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which features a clock frequency of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1002 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 512 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit 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 is much (more or less 472%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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 should be a lot (approximately 758%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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