GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be quite a bit (more or less 282%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (282%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (approximately 205%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9040 (205%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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