GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which has a GPU core clock speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 320 Stream Processors, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R5 M255 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is much (more or less 118%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be a lot (approximately 74%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.