GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980M, which features GPU clock speed of 1038 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M will be 900% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (approximately 1053%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91008 (1053%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (approximately 1438%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 62112 (1438%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.