GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 930M, which features a clock speed of 928 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 930M overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M should be quite a bit (approximately 158%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (158%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 930M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.