GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, which comes with a clock speed of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		40 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should be a lot (approximately 380%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		1800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6840 (380%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 will be much (more or less 380%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM), and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3420 (380%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.