GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1026 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (158%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 85696 (670%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is much (approximately 700%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25200 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (more or less 1100%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.