GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (40%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.