GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 940 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform 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 will be much (more or less 163%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon R5 M255, and very much so. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.