In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GT 630 are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3.

The GeForce GT 630 has a 270 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the 8600 GT. This results in the GeForce GT 630 providing 4.4 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GT 630 has a 270 MHz higher core clock speed than the 8600 GT, but the 8600 GT has 4 more Render Output Units than the GeForce GT 630. As a result, the 8600 GT exhibits a 1.1 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GeForce GT 630. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GT 630 was released over three years more recently than the 8600 GT, and so the GeForce GT 630 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 GeForce GT 630 has 512 MB more video memory than the 8600 GT, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GeForce GT 630 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GeForce GT 630 has 6.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the 8600 GT, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GT 630 is marginally better than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GT 630 has 96. However, the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 630 is 156. The GeForce GT 630 having 113 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce GT 630 delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce GT 630 transistor size technology is 40 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 8600 GT. This means that the GeForce GT 630 is expected to run much cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts to run and the GeForce GT 630 requires 65 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT and a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GeForce GT 630. The GeForce GT 630 requires 19 Watts more than the 8600 GT to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GeForce GT 630 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the 8600 GT.