GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), which has GPU clock speed of 540 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 32 Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) should be a lot (about 140%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5040 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is much (approximately 140%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2520 (140%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.