GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce GT 430

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 430, which comes with core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 96 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 430 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 should be a lot (approximately 30%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (30%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 is superior to the GeForce GT 430, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.