GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has core clock speeds of 924 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970M should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (approximately 1953%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70320 (1953%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (approximately 2364%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42552 (2364%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.