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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 features a clock frequency of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with a core clock frequency of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 47 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 140 Watts
Difference: 93 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should be 1027% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 144192 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 131392 (1027%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (more or less 807%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 69760 (807%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 19200 (444%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

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GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 GeForce GTX 660
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year April 2007 September 2012
Code Name G84 GK106
Memory 512 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 980 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 6008 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 140 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 144192 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 78400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 23520 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 960
Texture Mapping Units 16 80
Render Output Units 8 24
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 192-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 28 nm
Transistors 289 million 2540 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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