GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 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 4650 512MB		55 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4650 512MB should be 25% quicker than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4650 512MB is quite a bit (about 433%) better at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (433%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4650 512MB should be a lot (approximately 167%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (167%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.