GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 251200 (1963%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (about 3189%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 114800 (3189%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27800 (1544%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.