GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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

The Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is quite a bit (more or less 67%) faster with regards to AF 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is a better choice, and very much so. (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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus 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 ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.