GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs as well as 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 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 is 67% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, 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 is a lot (about 67%) more effective at 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 quite a bit (approximately 67%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.