GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 310, which comes with clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 310 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) will be much (more or less 83%) better at AF 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 lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is a better choice, 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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 also depends on quite a few 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.