GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 500 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be much (more or less 633%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (633%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (267%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.