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GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The GeForce 8500 GT uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 450 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a speed of 400 MHz on this model. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT 45 Watts
Radeon HD 6970 250 Watts
Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 2247%) better at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT 3600 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 80880 (2247%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (about 1464%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT 1800 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 26360 (1464%)

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

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GeForce 8500 GT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8500 GT Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 December 2010
Code Name G86 Cayman XT
Memory 512 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 450 MHz 880 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 45 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 3600 Mtexels/sec 84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 1800 Mpixels/sec 28160 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 1536
Texture Mapping Units 8 96
Render Output Units 4 32
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 40 nm
Transistors 210 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16, PCI, PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8500 GT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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