GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8500 GT

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8500 GT, which uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 450 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 830M should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M is quite a bit (about 357%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12864 (357%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6432 (357%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that 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 colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.