GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 is 5% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 129%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 43%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5760 (43%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.