GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R5 M255, which has a clock speed of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon R5 M255 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is quite a bit (more or less 74%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is a lot (more or less 39%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2120 (39%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.