GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 930M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 930M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 928 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 930M should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M is quite a bit (approximately 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 930M is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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