GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with core speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 62%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 29%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (29%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.