GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M330, which features a clock frequency of 1030 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R5 M330 should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 is quite a bit (more or less 138%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11960 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 will be quite a bit (about 91%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.