GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GT 230

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 230, which features a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 1536 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 230, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be much (about 23%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (23%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (23%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.