GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 930M, which features core 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GTS should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 930M overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M is quite a bit (more or less 106%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11472 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 930M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2024 (37%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.