GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which features a clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 87680 (548%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be quite a bit (more or less 345%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30368 (345%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10288 (234%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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