GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M330, which features a core clock frequency of 1030 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R5 M330 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 is a lot (more or less 91%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9800 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 should be quite a bit (approximately 53%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2840 (53%)

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 over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.