GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970M, which features a core clock frequency of 924 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970M should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (approximately 756%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65280 (756%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40032 (927%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.