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GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GTS features clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 850M, which comes with a core clock speed of 876 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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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 the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a lot (approximately 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

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a lot (approximately 160%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

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