GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R5 M230, which features a core clock frequency of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 is much (about 77%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (41%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.