GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (450%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 368000 (2300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is quite a bit (about 1718%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 151200 (1718%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59600 (1355%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.