GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (more or less 323%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (323%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (464%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.