GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 930M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 928 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 930M will be 13% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M is quite a bit (about 519%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18672 (519%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 930M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5624 (312%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.