GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with a clock speed of 740 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a lot (about 339%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36560 (339%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6440 (119%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.