GeForce 825M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2

Intro

The GeForce 825M features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM is set to run at 900 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 384 SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Compare that to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, which has a core clock frequency of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It features 32 SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.