GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with a core clock speed of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be much (approximately 77%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (41%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.