GeForce 8600 GT vs Radeon HD 6550M

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking1009not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency3.62no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code nameLexingtonG84
Market segmentLaptopDesktop
Release date26 November 2010 (13 years ago)17 April 2007 (17 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)no data$159

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 cores40032
Core clock speed600 MHz540 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million289 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)26 Watt47 Watt
Texture fill rate12.008.640
Floating-point processing power0.48 TFLOPS0.07616 TFLOPS
ROPs88
TMUs2016

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 sizemedium sizedno data
InterfaceMXM-IIPCIe 1.0 x16
Lengthno data170 mm
Widthno data1-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno dataNone
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 typeDDR3GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount1 GB512 MB
Standard memory config per GPUno data256 MB
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed900 MHz700 MHz
Memory bandwidth28.8 GB/s22.4 GB/s
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 ConnectorsNo outputs2x DVI, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model5.04.0
OpenGL4.42.1
OpenCL1.21.1
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA-1.1

Pros & cons summary


Recency 26 November 2010 17 April 2007
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 512 MB
Chip lithography 40 nm 80 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 26 Watt 47 Watt

HD 6550M has an age advantage of 3 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, a 100% more advanced lithography process, and 80.8% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 6550M and GeForce 8600 GT. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Radeon HD 6550M is a notebook card while GeForce 8600 GT 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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AMD Radeon HD 6550M
Radeon HD 6550M
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
GeForce 8600 GT

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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Questions & comments

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