GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 700%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61600 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 482%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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.