GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs GeForce 940M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 940M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1072 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB should perform much faster than the GeForce 940M overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (180%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB will be a lot (approximately 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 940M. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is a small bit (about 12%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 940M, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1024 (12%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card can 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many 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.