GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which comes with clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 288 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (325%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a lot (about 255%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (255%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (373%)

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 across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.