GeForce 810M vs GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, which makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 540 MHz. The DDR2 memory is set to run at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 810M		15 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 810M should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 810M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 will be much (about 46%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 810M. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 810M		5904 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2736 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 should be quite a bit (more or less 46%) better at AA than the GeForce 810M, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 810M		2952 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1368 (46%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.