GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 880M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 880M, which has GPU core speed of 954 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 880M is 300% faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be much (approximately 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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This 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 graphics 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.