GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 460, which comes with core clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 768 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 24 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		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (238%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be much (more or less 330%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29000 (330%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11800 (268%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.