GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Geforce GTX 780

Intro

Compare all that to the Geforce GTX 780, which features core clock speeds of 863 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 192 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 780 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 265984 (1187%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 will be quite a bit (approximately 1818%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 157056 (1818%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 780 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37104 (859%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.