GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, which makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 540 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a frequency of 400 MHz on this specific card. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 830M, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M is a lot (about 91%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7824 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3912 (91%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.