GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 850M, which comes with a clock frequency of 876 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is a lot (more or less 224%) better at texture 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, by a large margin. (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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.