GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R5 M255, which has GPU clock speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 should be 40% faster than the Radeon R5 M255 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is a lot (about 118%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 will be much (approximately 74%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (74%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.