GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M230, which features a clock speed of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R5 M230 should be 25% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be much (about 81%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 is superior to the Radeon R5 M230, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (38%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.