GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 150400 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (approximately 860%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75680 (860%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23760 (540%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.