GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also 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)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7790 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is quite a bit (about 112%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (112%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be quite a bit (approximately 142%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.