GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 238400 (931%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 1245%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109600 (1245%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (about 573%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25200 (573%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.