GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 880M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 880M, which has a core clock frequency of 954 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 880M should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M is a lot (about 1031%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111312 (1031%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25128 (465%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.