GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 112 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7790 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (approximately 37%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be just a bit (approximately 20%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7790, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (20%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.