GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 130

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) comes with a core clock frequency of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GT 130, which makes use of a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 500 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 250 MHz on this particular model. It features 48 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a 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. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.