GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 850 MHz on this card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should be 240% quicker than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (240%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB is a lot (about 100%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (100%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel fill rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at AA, and be able to handle the same resolutions. (explain)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.