GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 590, which has GPU clock speed of 607 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 855 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be much (approximately 799%) more effective at 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 should be a lot (about 1249%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.