GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 450, which features GPU clock speed of 783 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 902 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 192 Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTS 450 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be much (approximately 190%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16416 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8208 (190%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.