Hardware Secrets take a look at the MSI GeForce 8500 GT (also called as NX8500GT-TD256E), one of the cheapest video card based on DirectX 10 available today. GeForce 8500 GT runs at 450 MHz and accesses its 256 MB DDR2 memory at 800 MHz (400 MHz transferring two data per clock cycle) thru a 128-bit interface, so it can access its memory at a maximum transfer rate of 12.8 GB/s. It has only 16 shader processors running at 900 MHz (GeForce 8600 GT and GTS has 32 shader processors). They compared this card with other mid-range products from both nVidia and AMD/ATI. Here's an excerpt:

Costing around USD 100, this video card competes in price with Radeon X1300 XT. Even though this competitor from AMD/ATI does not feature a Shader 4.0 unified engine - i.e. not supporting DirectX 10 - in our benchmark it achieved better results than the reviewed video card. It is important to notice that the Radeon X1300 XT model we compared GeForce 8500 GT to featured GDDR3 memories running at 1GHz, and there are on the market models with DDR2 memories running at 800 MHz.

Radeon X1300 XT was between 4.27% and 9.98% faster on 3DMark03 with no image quality settings enabled, but when we enabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, these two video cards achieved a similar performance at 1600x1200, with GeForce 8500 GT being 5.82% faster than Radeon X1300 XT at 1024x768.

On 3DMark06 both achieved similar results. Quake 4 is ATI's Achilles Heel and here GeForce 8500 GT was between 6% and 23% faster than Radeon X1300 XT, depending on the video configuration we used. On F.E.A.R., however, Radeon X1300 XT was between 14% and 48% faster than GeForce 8500 GT, depending on the video configuration we used.

On Far Cry the same happened: Radeon X1300 XT was between 9% and 34% faster than GeForce 8500 GT, even though both cards achieved the same performance at 1024x768 with image quality settings enabled. And on Battlefield 2142 Radeon X1300 XT was between 6% and 13% faster than the reviewed card, even though they achieved the same performance at 1600x1200 with image quality settings enabled.

For the kind of user this video card is targeted - someone wanting to spend only around USD 100 on a video card - we think Radeon X1300 XT with GDDR3 memories is a better buy. Also, if you have USD 20 more to spend, we highly recommend the Radeon X1650 Pro video card: spending only 20% more you get up to 79% more in performance. That is definitely the kind of deal we are looking for!