GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce GT 640 DDR3

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1782 MHz on this specific card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		65 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41024 (256%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 is a lot (approximately 227%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (227%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 will be a lot (approximately 227%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (227%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.