GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 310, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 589 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 310 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 310 will be quite a bit (about 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1112 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 310 is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.