GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7990 should perform a lot faster 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 should be a lot (approximately 624%) faster with regards to AF 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 (more or less 533%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.