GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce GT 210

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 210, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 589 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 210 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 210		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 will be much (about 87%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4088 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2044 (87%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.