ATI Radeon 9700 PRO vs GeForce 8500 GT

Place in the ranking	1276	1425
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.01	no data
Power efficiency	0.84	no data
Architecture	Tesla (2006−2010)	Rage 8 (2002−2007)
GPU code name	G86	R300
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	17 April 2007 (17 years ago)	1 July 2002 (22 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$129	no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

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	16	no data
Core clock speed	459 MHz	325 MHz
Number of transistors	210 million	110 million
Manufacturing process technology	80 nm	150 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	30 Watt	no data
Texture fill rate	3.672	2.600
Floating-point processing power	0.02938 TFLOPS	no data
ROPs	4	8
TMUs	8	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	AGP 8x
Length	229 mm	no data
Width	1-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	None	Floppy
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	DDR
Maximum RAM amount	256 MB	128 MB
Standard memory config per GPU	256 MB	no data
Memory bus width	128 Bit	256 Bit
Memory clock speed	400 MHz	310 MHz
Memory bandwidth	12.8 GB/s	19.84 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

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

API compatibility

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

DirectX	11.1 (10_0)	9.0 (9_0)
Shader Model	4.0	no data
OpenGL	2.1	2.0
OpenCL	1.1	N/A
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.

8500 GT 0.36
+157%

ATI 9700 PRO 0.14

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.

8500 GT 139
+162%

ATI 9700 PRO 53

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	0.36	0.14
Recency	17 April 2007	1 July 2002
Maximum RAM amount	256 MB	128 MB
Chip lithography	80 nm	150 nm

8500 GT has a 157.1% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 4 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 87.5% more advanced lithography process.

The GeForce 8500 GT is our recommended choice as it beats the Radeon 9700 PRO in performance tests.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.