GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 8800 Ultra

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, which uses a 90 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 612 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1080 MHz on this card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (264%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra will be 710% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 90880 (710%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be much (about 353%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30528 (353%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be much (about 240%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (240%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.