GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs GeForce GT 210

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 210, which comes with GPU clock speed of 589 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 16 Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 will be quite a bit (approximately 83%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3928 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 is superior to the GeForce GT 210, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1964 (83%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.