GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which comes with core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 will be 60% quicker than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (60%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at AF. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at FSAA, and be capable of handling the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across 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 it uses DDR 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 AA, HDR 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 by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.