GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 420, which has core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 48 SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 420 should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 is a lot (more or less 57%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 is superior to the GeForce GT 420, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (57%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated 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 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.