GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 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 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should be 700% quicker than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (more or less 323%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (323%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (464%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.