GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with a clock frequency of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R5 M230 should be much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 is quite a bit (approximately 333%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (333%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M230 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.