GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (222%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (1650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (more or less 2933%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 105600 (2933%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 65400 (3633%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.