GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce 940M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 940M, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1072 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 should perform much faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be quite a bit (about 198%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17088 (198%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 940M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (99%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.