GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6990 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 294400 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a lot (more or less 1711%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 150560 (1711%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (about 1107%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.