Radeon R5 M230 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with a clock speed of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be a lot (about 21%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M255 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (141%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.