GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 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 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3690/3830, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be much (more or less 21%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1888 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

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