Radeon HD 7790 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (135%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 60%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 7790, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (60%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.