GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 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 in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 is quite a bit (about 21%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1888 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be much (more or less 143%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.