GeForce 320M Mac Edition vs 8600M GS
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | not rated | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Architecture | Tesla (2006−2010) | Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013) |
| GPU code name | G86 | C89 |
| Market segment | Laptop | Desktop |
| Release date | 1 May 2007 (17 years ago) | 1 April 2010 (14 years ago) |
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 cores | 16 | 48 |
| Core clock speed | 450 MHz | 450 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 210 million | 486 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 80 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 20 Watt | 23 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 3.600 | 7.200 |
| Floating-point processing power | 0.0288 TFLOPS | 0.0912 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 4 | 8 |
| TMUs | 8 | 16 |
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).
| Laptop size | medium sized | no data |
| Interface | MXM-II | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
| Width | no data | IGP |
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 type | DDR2 | System Shared |
| Maximum RAM amount | 512 MB | System Shared |
| Memory bus width | 128 Bit | System Shared |
| Memory clock speed | 400 MHz | System Shared |
| Memory bandwidth | 12.8 GB/s | no data |
| Shared memory | - | no data |
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 Connectors | No outputs | Portable Device Dependent |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 11.1 (10_0) | 11.1 (10_1) |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 4.1 |
| OpenGL | 3.3 | 3.3 |
| OpenCL | 1.1 | N/A |
| Vulkan | N/A | N/A |
| CUDA | 1.1 | - |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 1 May 2007 | 1 April 2010 |
| Chip lithography | 80 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 20 Watt | 23 Watt |
8600M GS has 15% lower power consumption.
320M Mac Edition, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 2 years, and a 100% more advanced lithography process.
We couldn't decide between GeForce 8600M GS and GeForce 320M Mac Edition. We've got no test results to judge.
Be aware that GeForce 8600M GS is a notebook card while GeForce 320M Mac Edition is a desktop 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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