Nvidia GeForce 8500GT review

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The Nvidia GeForce 8500GT is a fairly old GPU, one that’s heyday has long past. But back in the day, it was considered a pretty fascinating GPU. Originally launched in 2007, the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT was originally released for $129, making it a somewhat mid-range GPU at the time. Back then, it managed to become a fairly popular GPU, one that became the defacto choice for many users.

Of course, you’ll never really hear anyone talking about the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT these days except in retrospect. Remembering back on it fondly isn’t too surprising, considering how popular it was. But nowadays, it’s practically remembered as a relic. This is mainly because nowadays, you’d be hard pressed to find a single game that it can run smoothly.



But is this really true? What if we did test out an Nvidia GeForce 8500GT with modern games as if it were part of a modern setup? What would its performance even be like? That’s what we seek to find out with our full review of the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT. We’ll be taking a deep dive into its specifications, performance, and even its alternatives, if they even still exist.

Granted, we’re not really expecting anything out of the now 15-year-old mid-range GPU. We’ll be largely surprised if it even managed to play a single HD game at a stable frame rate, but we’re willing to at least give it a chance. So, how does the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT fare? Read our Nvidia GeForce 8500GT full review to find out!

Specifications

So, what are the specifications on this thing actually like? Well, the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT features 16 stream processors, a 450MHz core clock, 900MHz shader clock, and a 400MHz memory clock. There are both 256MB and 512MB varieties for the GeForce 8500GT but the card we are exploring today only offers 128-bit DDR2 256MB memory.

Running the length of the graphics card is an aluminum heatsink to passively cool the G86 core and GDDR2 memory. This heatsink is single-sided and does not use a heatpipe to assist in the cooling process. Some other features for the GPU support for OpenGL 2.0, Scalable Link Interface (SLI), PureVideo HD, Dual-link DVI, and HDCP support.

Overall, very middling stuff, not anything to write home about. Nowadays, it’s practically in the dust by even the cheapest Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

Performance

There is simply no way around it, the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT has abysmal performance by today’s standards. Even getting it to work can be somewhat of a struggle, considering how far we’ve come since back then. The Nvidia GeForce 8500GT may have been decent back in the day, but it’s extremely difficult to make it work these days.

The fact that it doesn’t support even DirectX 11 means that a lot of games won’t even run on it. When you do find a game that works on it, you’ll find yourself struggling to get things running smoothly. Testing Far Cry 3 on it, it barely even moves. The game chugs at below 20fps, even when toned down to the lowest graphics settings. The resolution needs to be pumped down to make it playable.

Nvidia GeForce 8500GT

Even a less demanding older game like Team Fortress 2 can struggle a bit on the game, which is surprising considering the game released in 2007 just like the GPU. It’s a testament to how even older games have gotten more polished with updates and the like. You really can’t point at many games this GPU can play, which is a big problem considering that it’s a GPU.

Testing out a newer game like Warframe, the game chugs completely. Unless you bump down the graphic quality to the very lowest options and then bring down the resolution to impossibly blurry levels, the game is once again unplayable. This repeats for basically every game we test on the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT, which really isn’t too surprising.

So yeah, to put it simply, the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT isn’t really much of a performer. It’s definitely an interesting piece of computer technology history, but its glory days are very much behind it. Any GPU you find on the market is going to outperform the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT by a staggering degree. Even modern day APUs will work perform better than the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT will today.

Nvidia GeForce 8500GT alternatives

For alternatives, you can pick basically any cheap secondhand GPU available on the market that’s newer. The Nvidia GeForce 8500GT is a bit pricier than many more powerful GPUs entirely because it’s become a bit of a collector’s item. It’s not meant to be used, but rather to be kept and displayed as a piece of history, which is what it is at this point.

So yes, if you’re looking for a different GPU that can do what the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT does, you’re in luck. Basically, any GPU released in the past 10 years will outperform it, so you won’t have to look very hard. Or, if you’re just looking for something cheap to use, you can try one of the modern AMD APUs, the performance is much better, and they come bundled with CPUs as well.

If you’re looking at the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT as a collectible item however, there’s arguably not really much that can replace it. That’s just the nature of collectibles however, they’re worth anything because of what they are as opposed to what they can do. To that end, the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT is a piece of history, though not one that’s particularly rare or anything even now.

Conclusion about the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT

We cannot stress this enough, do not buy the Nvidia GeForce 8500GT unless you’re interested in it from a collector’s standpoint. There’s nothing great about it today, and unlike some older graphics cards, it doesn’t hold up by any stretch of the imagination. You’re doing yourself a favor getting something better suited to modern day gaming, especially if you plan on actually having fun.

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