GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which has GPU clock speed of 915 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 1344 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (1025%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be much (approximately 1086%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93840 (1086%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be a lot (approximately 408%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17640 (408%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred 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 the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.