GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this specific card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 85696 (670%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (more or less 233%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (233%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a lot (more or less 400%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17280 (400%)

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 is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.