GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580, which comes with clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (225%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160384 (501%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (more or less 357%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38608 (357%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31656 (586%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.