GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 480, which comes with core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 924 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be 1286% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 164608 (1286%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is quite a bit (about 1067%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (1067%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (approximately 1767%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31800 (1767%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.