GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460, which has core speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 768 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (575%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is much (about 338%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29160 (338%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11880 (275%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.