GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 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 R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (about 2922%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 105200 (2922%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25400 (1411%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in 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 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.