GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (260%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270X should perform much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1020%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (more or less 809%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (809%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (about 627%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.