GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M255, which features a core clock frequency of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R5 M255 will be 25% faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is a lot (more or less 422%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (422%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is quite a bit (about 318%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5720 (318%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 maximum fill rate.