GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, which comes with clock speeds of 1506 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1152 SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (155%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 183808 (1436%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB will be quite a bit (about 1155%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99792 (1155%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB will be much (about 1573%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 67968 (1573%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.