GeForce 825M vs GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, which has core clock speeds of 540 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 1024 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 825M		33 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 825M should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 825M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 825M is quite a bit (approximately 57%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 825M		13600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4960 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 825M is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 825M		6800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2480 (57%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.