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GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GTS makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has a clock frequency of 876 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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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 memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be much (about 224%) faster with regards to AF 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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is the winner, by far. (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

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GeForce 8600 GTS

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GeForce GTX 850M

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce 8600 GTS	GeForce GTX 850M
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	April 2007	March 12 2014
Code Name	G84	GM107
Memory	512 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	675 MHz	876 MHz
Memory Speed	2000 MHz	2000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	75 watts	40 watts
Bandwidth	32000 MB/sec	32000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	10800 Mtexels/sec	35040 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	5400 Mpixels/sec	14016 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	640
Texture Mapping Units	16	40
Render Output Units	8	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	DDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	80 nm	28 nm
Transistors	289 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 12
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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