GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 850M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 876 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 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 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 850M should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (approximately 306%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (306%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be quite a bit (about 224%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9696 (224%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.