In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce 9600 GS are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3.

The 8600 GT has a 40 MHz higher core clock speed than the GeForce 9600 GS, but the GeForce 9600 GS has 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the 8600 GT. As a result, the GeForce 9600 GS exhibits a 3.4 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the 8600 GT. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The 8600 GT has a 40 MHz higher core clock speed than the GeForce 9600 GS, but the GeForce 9600 GS has 4 more Render Output Units than the 8600 GT. As a result, the GeForce 9600 GS exhibits a 1.7 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the 8600 GT. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce 9600 GS was released over a year more recently than the 8600 GT, and so the GeForce 9600 GS is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 9600 GS has 256 MB more video memory than the 8600 GT, so is likely to be slightly better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GeForce 9600 GS also has superior memory performance overall.

The GeForce 9600 GS has 1.6 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the 8600 GT, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce 9600 GS is marginally better than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce 9600 GS has 48. However, the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce 9600 GS is 60. The GeForce 9600 GS having 17 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce 9600 GS delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 9600 GS transistor size technology is 15 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 8600 GT. This means that the GeForce 9600 GS is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 8600 GT. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the GeForce 9600 GS should consume less power than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce 9600 GS. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT and a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the GeForce 9600 GS. The GeForce 9600 GS has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the 8600 GT. The difference is significant enough that the GeForce 9600 GS may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the 8600 GT.