GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which features GPU core speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R5 M230 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be much (approximately 81%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.