GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GT 430 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), which comes with core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 96 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GTS will be 11% faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should be a small bit (about 4%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be much (approximately 93%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (93%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of 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, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many 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.