GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8500 GT

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 8500 GT, which comes with a core clock speed of 450 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is made up of 16 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 830M should in theory perform just a bit faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M is much (approximately 357%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12864 (357%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6432 (357%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.