GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 828 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be a lot (more or less 21%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1888 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.