GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R5 M255 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 will be much (more or less 118%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be much (more or less 74%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.