GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 570, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 732 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 950 MHz on this card. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (366%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 570 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 139200 (1088%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is much (approximately 408%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35280 (408%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be a lot (approximately 578%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (578%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.