GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which has a clock speed of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GTS should be 100% faster than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be quite a bit (approximately 44%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be quite a bit (about 73%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R5 M230, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2280 (73%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.