GeForce 820M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, which comes with a core clock speed of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 820M should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 820M will be quite a bit (more or less 33%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2864 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 will be quite a bit (about 50%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 820M, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1444 (50%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.