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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 memory runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific model. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 160 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

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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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (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 quite a bit (approximately 47%) more effective at anisotropic 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

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 should be a lot (about 47%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out 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 ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

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