GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, which has a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be a lot (more or less 23%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is much (approximately 23%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (23%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write 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 clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.