GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which makes use of a 8 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1320 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a frequency of 1875 MHz on this specific model. It features 3584 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (262%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3060, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 355840 (2780%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be much (approximately 1611%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139200 (1611%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59040 (1367%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.