In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the 8600 GT and the GeForce 8600 GT are equal.

The 8600 GT and the GeForce 8600 GT have both the same core clock speed and the same Texture Fill Rate. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The 8600 GT and the GeForce 8600 GT have both the same core clock speed and the same Pixel Fill Rate. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

Both the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 and the GeForce 8600 GT were released at the same time, so are likely to be quite similar.

The 8600 GT has 256 MB more video memory than the GeForce 8600 GT, so is likely to be slightly better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the 8600 GT also has superior memory performance overall.

The memory bandwidth of the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 and the GeForce 8600 GT are the same, which means the 8600 GT and the GeForce 8600 GT have equal limitations when it comes to graphical data transfer.

Both the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 and the GeForce 8600 GT have 32 Shader Processing Units. Having the same number of SPUs and using the same architecture means that the performance they offer can be compared by looking at the memory bandwidth, Texture and Pixel Rates. In this case, the two GPUs have extremely similar stats, so any gaming performance difference would most likely be negligible.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts to run and the GeForce 8600 GT requires 47 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT and a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the GeForce 8600 GT. The GeForce 8600 GT requires 1 Watts more than the 8600 GT to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GeForce 8600 GT to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the 8600 GT.