In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 are significantly better than the Nvidia Quadro FX 3400.

The 8600 GT was released over a year more recently than the Quadro FX 3400, and so the 8600 GT is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the Quadro FX 3400.

The 8600 GT has 256 MB more video memory than the Quadro FX 3400, so is likely to be slightly better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, the overall memory performance is about the same.

The Quadro FX 3400 has 6.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the 8600 GT, which means that the memory performance of the Quadro FX 3400 is marginally better than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32 Shader Processing Units and the Quadro FX 3400 has 6. However, the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43 and the actual shader performance of the Quadro FX 3400 is 2. The 8600 GT having 41 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the 8600 GT delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Quadro FX 3400.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts to run and the Quadro FX 3400 requires 101 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 Quadro FX 3400. The Quadro FX 3400 requires 55 Watts more than the 8600 GT to run. The difference is significant enough that the Quadro FX 3400 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the 8600 GT.