GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5570, which comes with a clock speed of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5570 should in theory perform just a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 should be a lot (approximately 48%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5570 is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (18%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.