GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be quite a bit (approximately 29%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.