GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GT 430

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 430, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 430 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 should be quite a bit (more or less 30%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 is quite a bit (about 54%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1520 (54%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.