GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 930M, which has GPU clock speed of 928 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 930M will be 13% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M should be a lot (approximately 158%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (158%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 930M should be a lot (more or less 72%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3104 (72%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.