GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 590, which has GPU core speed of 607 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 855 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 318 Watts (677%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 305920 (1366%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot (approximately 799%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69056 (799%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be much (approximately 1249%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 53952 (1249%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.