GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which comes with clock speeds of 914 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (approximately 239%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25760 (239%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (more or less 171%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9224 (171%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.