GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (256%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (800%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a lot (more or less 950%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34200 (950%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be a lot (approximately 1100%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (1100%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.