GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which has core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 1963% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (more or less 3189%) better at 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 running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 max amount of information (measured 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 the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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