GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7790 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be a lot (more or less 112%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (112%)

Pixel Rate

If using 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 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (142%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.