GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has core speeds of 876 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 850M should be 43% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (43%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a lot (more or less 306%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (306%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be quite a bit (more or less 224%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9696 (224%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 reach the max fill rate.