GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, which comes with GPU clock speed of 540 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 700 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 32 Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (75%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have the exact same texel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at AF. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be able to handle the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.