GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 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 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6990 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 294400 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit (about 1711%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 150560 (1711%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit (approximately 1107%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48720 (1107%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 applied in a second.

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