GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce 8800 GT 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 700 MHz on this particular card. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is quite a bit (more or less 211%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (211%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (78%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.