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GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 features a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 112 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB will be quite a bit (about 282%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (282%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 118%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (118%)

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

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GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9500 GT DDR2	GeForce 9800 GT 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	July 2008	July 2008
Code Name	G96a	G92a/b
Memory	256 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	550 MHz	600 MHz
Memory Speed	1000 MHz	1800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	50 watts	105 watts
Bandwidth	16000 MB/sec	57600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8800 Mtexels/sec	33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4400 Mpixels/sec	9600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	112
Texture Mapping Units	16	56
Render Output Units	8	16
Bus Type	DDR2	GDDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	65 nm	65/55 nm
Transistors	314 million	754 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0, PCI	PCIe x16 2.0
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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