GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (123%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should be much (approximately 289%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (122%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.