GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1012 MHz on this specific card. It features 48 SPUs along with 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 DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is 102% quicker than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16384 (102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is a little bit (approximately 14%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.