GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 SPUs, 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 8800 GS		105 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7790 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be quite a bit (more or less 112%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		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, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.