GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6990, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 330 Watts (733%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 307200 (2400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (more or less 4327%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155760 (4327%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (more or less 2851%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51320 (2851%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.