GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which has core clock speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a lot (more or less 833%) better at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (833%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11640 (647%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It 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 ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.