GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 310, which comes with core 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 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 310 will be 25% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is much (more or less 83%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3928 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is superior to the GeForce GT 310, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.