GeForce 8600 GT Mac Edition vs GTX 680

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking	358	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	2.95	no data
Power efficiency	5.12	no data
Architecture	Kepler (2012−2018)	Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code name	GK104	G84
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	22 March 2012 (12 years ago)	17 April 2007 (17 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$499	$159

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	1536	32
Core clock speed	1006 MHz	600 MHz
Boost clock speed	1058 MHz	no data
Number of transistors	3,540 million	289 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	195 Watt	47 Watt
Texture fill rate	135.4	9.600
Floating-point processing power	3.25 TFLOPS	0.0928 TFLOPS
ROPs	32	8
TMUs	128	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).

Bus support	PCI Express 3.0	no data
Interface	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 1.0 x16
Length	254 mm	170 mm
Height	4.376" (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	2x 6-pin	None
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	GDDR5	GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount	2048 MB	128 MB
Memory bus width	256-bit GDDR5	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	1502 MHz	750 MHz
Memory bandwidth	192.2 GB/s	24 GB/s
Shared memory	-	-

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	One Dual Link DVI-I, One Dual Link DVI-D, One HDMI, One DisplayPort	2x DVI
Multi monitor support	4 displays	no data
HDMI	+	-
HDCP	+	-
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	Internal	no data

API compatibility

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

DirectX	12 (11_0)	11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model	5.1	4.0
OpenGL	4.2	3.3
OpenCL	1.2	1.1
Vulkan	1.1.126	N/A
CUDA	+	1.1

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	22 March 2012	17 April 2007
Maximum RAM amount	2048 MB	128 MB
Chip lithography	28 nm	80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	195 Watt	47 Watt

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