GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 310, which features clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 310 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) should be much (about 83%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3928 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is superior to the GeForce GT 310, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.