GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4650 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 118%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (118%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4650 512MB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (9%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.