GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which has core speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should be 463% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 118592 (463%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (more or less 791%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69600 (791%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19120 (435%)

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 across 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 RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.