GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce 8800 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB will be a lot (more or less 833%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (833%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB should be a lot (more or less 433%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (433%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.