GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M330, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1030 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 is 56% faster than the Radeon R5 M330 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 is much (about 138%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11960 (138%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M330 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across 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 RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.