GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 450, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 902 MHz on this particular card. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is quite a bit (about 596%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21456 (596%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10728 (596%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.