GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5570, which comes with clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 400(80x5) SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5570 should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 should be quite a bit (about 48%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5570 is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (18%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.