GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should be much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (approximately 2247%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80880 (2247%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 1464%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26360 (1464%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.