GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with 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 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7790, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be much (about 536%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (536%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is a lot (about 264%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.