GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 930M, which comes with clock speeds of 928 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 930M should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M will be a lot (approximately 158%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (158%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 930M should be a lot (more or less 72%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.