GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 features a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory runs at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 32 Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.