GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with a core clock speed of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R5 M255 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176384 (1102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a lot (about 163%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30608 (163%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29536 (393%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.