GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 732 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 448 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 40 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		210 Watts
	Difference: 163 Watts (347%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		144000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (1025%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 should be a lot (more or less 374%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		40992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32352 (374%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (578%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.