GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M330, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1030 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R5 M330, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 will be a lot (about 138%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11960 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 is much (approximately 91%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (91%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.