GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GT 230

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 230, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 230 is 20% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is quite a bit (about 23%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is much (about 23%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (23%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.