GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 860M, which has GPU clock speed of 797 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 1152 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 860M should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be much (approximately 608%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65712 (608%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (approximately 136%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7352 (136%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.