GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, 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 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (202%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (more or less 473%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (473%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (about 555%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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.