GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (202%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (740%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (about 473%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (473%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (about 555%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on many 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.