GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be a lot (approximately 67%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (67%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (67%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.