GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 540 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 700 MHz on this particular card. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 850 MHz on this specific model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.