GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which features GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (more or less 27%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a lot (approximately 104%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6840 (104%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.