GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with GPU clock speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 should be 40% faster than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 will be a lot (approximately 81%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 is superior to the Radeon R5 M230, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.