GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7790 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is much (about 169%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (169%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (54%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.