GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, which features a core clock frequency of 540 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 700 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit 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 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M should be a lot (about 91%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7824 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.