GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 780 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GTS should be much faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 will be a lot (about 44%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be much (about 73%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M230, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2280 (73%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.