GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, 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 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 should be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be quite a bit (about 30%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be quite a bit (approximately 48%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (48%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can 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 colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.