GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 930M, which comes with core speeds of 928 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 930M, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M will be much (about 158%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (158%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 930M should be quite a bit (about 72%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.