GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 430 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 430 1GB should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB should be a lot (approximately 30%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.