GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs GeForce 8500 GT

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 8500 GT, which uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 450 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this specific model. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		40 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8500 GT should be 100% quicker than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8500 GT is quite a bit (more or less 100%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		1800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8500 GT is much (about 100%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM), and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 900 (100%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.