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GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The GeForce 8500 GT uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 450 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 400 MHz on this model. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a core clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 2247%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, by far. (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

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GeForce 8500 GT

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8500 GT Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 December 2010
Code Name G86 Cayman XT
Memory 512 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 450 MHz 880 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 45 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 3600 Mtexels/sec 84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 1800 Mpixels/sec 28160 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 1536
Texture Mapping Units 8 96
Render Output Units 4 32
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 40 nm
Transistors 210 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16, PCI, PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8500 GT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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