GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 244 Watts (488%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 900% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230400 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (about 2536%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 223200 (2536%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 88400 (2009%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.