GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is quite a bit (about 536%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (536%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.