GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R5 M230, which has GPU clock speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R5 M230 is 25% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be quite a bit (approximately 81%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (38%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.