GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7790 is 67% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be a lot (approximately 67%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (67%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be a lot (about 67%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must 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 AA, High Dynamic Range 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.