GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X will be 2150% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (approximately 2922%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 105200 (2922%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25400 (1411%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

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

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