GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 850M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 876 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be much (more or less 224%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24240 (224%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8616 (160%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.