GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 540 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 700 MHz on this specific model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.