GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which features GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 is 950% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is much (more or less 833%) better 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is the winner, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.