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

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this particular card. 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 in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (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 will be much (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 (about 758%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also will be able to handle higher screen 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.