GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GT 210

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 210, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 589 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a frequency of 800 MHz on this model. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 210 will be much (more or less 31%) faster with regards to 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 210 is the winner, by a large margin. (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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.