GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GT 210

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 210, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 589 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this model. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 210 is a lot (about 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1112 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 210 will be quite a bit (approximately 31%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 556 (31%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.