GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be quite a bit (about 833%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (833%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be much (about 647%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11640 (647%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.