Aus_Karlos

An 8600GT is a very cheap version of the 8 series.

7600GT specs
* PCI-Express
* 90nm process, 177M transistors
* 128-bit GDDR3 memory interface
* 256 MB memory, other configurations possible
* Clocks for both vertex engine and core: 560 MHz
* Clocks for memory: 700 MHz (1.4 GHz DDR)
* 5 Vertex Shaders, 12 Pixel Shaders, 8 ROPs
* Peak Power consumption: 67W

8600GT Specs
* PCI-Express
* 80nm process, 289M transistors
* 128-bit GDDR3 memory interface
* 256 MB memory, other configurations possible
* Clocks for both vertex engine and core: 540 MHz
* Clocks for memory: 700 MHz (1.4 GHz DDR)
* 5 Vertex Shaders, 32 Pixel Shaders, 8 ROPs
* Peak Power consumption: 68W

As you can see the cards are very similar. The 8600GT was suppose to replace the 7600GT. All they have changed is the fact that it supports Shader Model 4 (7600 SM3.0) and DX10 (7600 DX9.0c)

These two new features now account for the cards performance. You are running COD4 in DX9 with SM3.0. While vmeng11 is running COD4 on an almost identical card but with high performance features (SM4.0 and DX10).

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