GeForce 8500 GT vs 7950 GT

Place in the ranking	1123	1276
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.05	0.01
Power efficiency	0.97	0.84
Architecture	Curie (2003−2013)	Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code name	G71	G86
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	6 August 2006 (18 years ago)	17 April 2007 (17 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$114.95	$129

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

7950 GT has 400% better value for money than 8500 GT.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	no data	16
Core clock speed	550 MHz	459 MHz
Number of transistors	278 million	210 million
Manufacturing process technology	90 nm	80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	65 Watt	30 Watt
Texture fill rate	13.20	3.672
Floating-point processing power	no data	0.02938 TFLOPS
ROPs	16	4
TMUs	24	8

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 1.0 x16	PCIe 1.0 x16
Length	no data	229 mm
Width	1-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin	None
SLI options	-	+

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	256 MB
Standard memory config per GPU	no data	256 MB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	700 MHz	400 MHz
Memory bandwidth	44.8 GB/s	12.8 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors

2x DVI, 1x S-Video

1x DVI, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	9.0c (9_3)	11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model	3.0	4.0
OpenGL	2.1	2.1
OpenCL	N/A	1.1
Vulkan	N/A	N/A
CUDA	-	1.1

Synthetic benchmark performance

Non-gaming benchmark results comparison. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.

Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

7950 GT 0.90
+150%

8500 GT 0.36

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

7950 GT 347
+150%

8500 GT 139

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	0.90	0.36
Recency	6 August 2006	17 April 2007
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	256 MB
Chip lithography	90 nm	80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	65 Watt	30 Watt