GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7990, which has a clock speed of 950 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7990 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 295 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 352224 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 should be a lot (more or less 164%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 151040 (164%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be quite a bit (about 88%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 295, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28544 (88%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.