GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M230, which features core clock speeds of 780 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 is 40% quicker than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 will be much (about 81%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 will be a lot (approximately 38%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M230, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (38%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.