GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 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 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (more or less 409%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36000 (409%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (approximately 191%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (191%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.