GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which has core 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be quite a bit (about 79%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be quite a bit (more or less 54%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.