GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which comes with GPU clock speed of 700 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 924 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 145408 (454%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a lot (about 289%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28200 (522%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.