GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 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 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (289%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (more or less 2122%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76400 (2122%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30200 (1678%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.