GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M330, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1030 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R5 M330 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 will be a lot (about 138%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11960 (138%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M330 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.