GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (511%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 371200 (2900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is much (approximately 4344%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 156400 (4344%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 62200 (3456%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.