GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 950% faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (approximately 1300%) better at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46800 (1300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27000 (1500%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.