GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 940 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R5 M255 should be 25% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be a lot (about 118%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (118%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M255 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (74%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.