GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should be much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (more or less 809%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (809%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (approximately 627%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (627%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.