GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2

Intro

Compare 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 speed of 400 MHz on this card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce 830M should be 13% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M will be a lot (approximately 91%) better at anisotropic filtering 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

The GeForce 830M will be much (approximately 91%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.