GMA 3000 vs GeForce 8600 GT

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking1309not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency0.47no data
ArchitectureTesla (2006−2010)Generation 4.0 (2006−2007)
GPU code nameG84Broadwater
Market segmentDesktopLaptop
Release date17 April 2007 (17 years ago)1 June 2006 (18 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$159 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores32no data
Core clock speed540 MHz400 MHz
Number of transistors289 millionno data
Manufacturing process technology80 nm90 nm
Power consumption (TDP)47 Watt13 Watt
Texture fill rate8.6401.600
Floating-point processing power0.07616 TFLOPSno data
ROPs84
TMUs164

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 1.0 x16PCIe 1.0 x16
Length170 mmno data
Width1-slotno data
Supplementary power connectorsNoneno data
SLI options+-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR3System Shared
Maximum RAM amount512 MBSystem Shared
Standard memory config per GPU256 MBno data
Memory bus width128 BitSystem Shared
Memory clock speed700 MHzSystem Shared
Memory bandwidth22.4 GB/sno data
Shared memory-+

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x S-VideoNo outputs

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX11.1 (10_0)9.0c
Shader Model4.03.0
OpenGL2.12.0
OpenCL1.1N/A
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA1.1-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 17 April 2007 1 June 2006
Chip lithography 80 nm 90 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 47 Watt 13 Watt

8600 GT has an age advantage of 10 months, and a 12.5% more advanced lithography process.

GMA 3000, on the other hand, has 261.5% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between GeForce 8600 GT and GMA 3000. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that GeForce 8600 GT is a desktop card while GMA 3000 is a notebook one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
GeForce 8600 GT
Intel GMA 3000
GMA 3000

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


3.1 1033 votes

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2.6 45 votes

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Questions & comments

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