GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M255, which features GPU core speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R5 M255 is 25% faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be quite a bit (about 118%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is much (about 74%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.