GeForce 8600 GTS vs Geforce GTX 780

Intro

Compare all that to the Geforce GTX 780, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 863 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 192 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 780 is 801% faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256384 (801%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 is much (about 1434%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 154896 (1434%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 780 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36024 (667%)

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 past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high 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 number of texture units of the card by the core 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.