GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which has a clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 will be just a bit (approximately 2%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 160 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 will be a little bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (2%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.