GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, which uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 540 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 400 MHz on this specific card. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 830M will be 13% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M will be quite a bit (about 91%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7824 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB 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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.