GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7990, which features GPU clock speed of 950 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 270 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7990 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 518400 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (approximately 624%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 209600 (624%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be quite a bit (approximately 533%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (533%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.