GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, which comes with a clock speed of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 TAUs, 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 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 830M should be a little bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M is quite a bit (more or less 91%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7824 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 830M is much (more or less 91%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.