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GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 makes use of a 55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 160 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 is a lot (more or less 47%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (47%)

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

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GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3

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Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3	Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	July 2008	February 2011
Code Name	G96b	Caicos
Memory	1024 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	550 MHz	750 MHz
Memory Speed	1600 MHz	3600 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	50 watts	31 watts
Bandwidth	25600 MB/sec	28800 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8800 Mtexels/sec	6000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4400 Mpixels/sec	3000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	160
Texture Mapping Units	16	8
Render Output Units	8	4
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	128-bit	64-bit
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	314 million	370 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0, PCI	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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