GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GT 210

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 210, which features clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 210 should be a lot (more or less 31%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1112 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 210 should be much (approximately 31%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 556 (31%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.