GeForce 8600 GTS vs 9800 GX2

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	873	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.04	no data
Power efficiency	0.73	no data
Architecture	Tesla (2006−2010)	Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code name	G92	G84
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	18 March 2008 (16 years ago)	17 April 2007 (17 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$599	$199

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	256 (128 per GPU)	32
Core clock speed	600 MHz	675 MHz
Number of transistors	754 million	289 million
Manufacturing process technology	65 nm	80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	197 Watt	60 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature	105 °C	no data
Texture fill rate	38.40	10.80
Floating-point processing power	0.384 TFLOPS	0.0928 TFLOPS
ROPs	16	8
TMUs	64	16

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 1.0 x16
Length	267 mm	198 mm
Height	2-slot	no data
Width	2-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin	1x 6-pin
SLI options	+	+

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	256 MB
Standard memory config per GPU	no data	256 MB
Memory bus width	512 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	1000 MHz	1000 MHz
Memory bandwidth	128 (64 per GPU)	32 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	HDMIDual Link DVI	2x DVI, 1x S-Video
Multi monitor support	+	no data
HDMI	+	-
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	S/PDIF	no data

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	11.1 (10_0)	11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
OpenGL	2.1	2.1
OpenCL	1.1	1.1
Vulkan	N/A	N/A
CUDA	+	1.1

Synthetic benchmark performance

Non-gaming benchmark results comparison. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.

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Pros & cons summary

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Recency	18 March 2008	17 April 2007
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	256 MB
Chip lithography	65 nm	80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	197 Watt	60 Watt

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