GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (280%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (680%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB will be a lot (more or less 355%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (355%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.