GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 940M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 940M, which has core clock speeds of 1072 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. 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

The GeForce 940M should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be much (about 198%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17088 (198%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be much (approximately 99%) more effective at full screen 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 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.