GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (170%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is a lot (approximately 250%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27000 (250%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a lot (more or less 200%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (200%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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 maximum fill rate.