GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, which uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 540 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 700 MHz on this card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 830M in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M is a lot (approximately 91%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7824 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 830M is quite a bit (more or less 91%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 better this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.