GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which features a clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It features 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 87680 (548%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be much (about 345%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30368 (345%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10288 (234%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.