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GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2

Intro

The GeForce 830M comes with a core clock frequency of 1029 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 256 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Compare that to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, which uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 540 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 830M is 13% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M is quite a bit (about 91%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7824 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3912 (91%)

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

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GeForce 830M

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 830M	GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	March 12 2014	April 2007
Code Name	GM108	G84
Memory	2048 MB	256 MB
Core Speed	1029 MHz	540 MHz
Memory Speed	1800 MHz	800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	25 watts	47 watts
Bandwidth	14400 MB/sec	12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate	16464 Mtexels/sec	8640 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	8232 Mpixels/sec	4320 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	256	32
Texture Mapping Units	16	16
Render Output Units	8	8
Bus Type	DDR3	DDR2
Bus Width	64-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	28 nm	80 nm
Transistors	(Unknown) million	289 million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 12	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.5	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

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