In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 are significantly better than the Intel HD Graphics Desktop (Haswell).

The Graphics Desktop has a 110 MHz higher core clock speed than the 8600 GT, but the 8600 GT has 12 more Texture Mapping Units than the Graphics Desktop. As a result, the 8600 GT exhibits a 6 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the Graphics Desktop. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The Graphics Desktop has a 110 MHz higher core clock speed than the 8600 GT, but the 8600 GT has 6 more Render Output Units than the Graphics Desktop. As a result, the 8600 GT exhibits a 3 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the Graphics Desktop. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Graphics Desktop was released over three years more recently than the 8600 GT, and so the Graphics Desktop is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the 8600 GT when running the latest games.

The 8600 GT has 512 MB video memory, but the Graphics Desktop does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The HD Graphics Desktop (Haswell) has 10 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32. However, the actual shader performance of the Graphics Desktop is 61 and the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43. The Graphics Desktop having 18 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the 8600 GT performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The Graphics Desktop transistor size technology is 58 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 8600 GT. This means that the Graphics Desktop is expected to run massively cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 8600 GT.

The HD Graphics Desktop (Haswell) requires 4 Watts to run and the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT, but we do not have a recommended PSU wattage for the Graphics Desktop. The 8600 GT requires 42 Watts more than the Graphics Desktop to run. The difference is significant enough that the 8600 GT may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the Graphics Desktop.