GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 560000 (3500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 should be a lot (about 2664%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 234400 (2664%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be much (approximately 1282%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56400 (1282%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.