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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 features a core clock frequency of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M330, which comes with clock speeds of 1030 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R5 M330 should be 13% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 should be much (about 138%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11960 (138%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M330 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, by far. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (91%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2

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Radeon R5 M330

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2	Radeon R5 M330
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	April 2007	2015
Code Name	G84	Oland
Memory	256 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	540 MHz	1030 MHz
Memory Speed	800 MHz	1800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	47 watts	(Unknown) watts
Bandwidth	12800 MB/sec	14400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8640 Mtexels/sec	20600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4320 Mpixels/sec	8240 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	320
Texture Mapping Units	16	20
Render Output Units	8	8
Bus Type	DDR2	DDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	64-bit
Fab Process	80 nm	28 nm
Transistors	289 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 12
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

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