GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 420, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 48 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 420 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 54%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is a lot (more or less 54%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 420, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1520 (54%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.