GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. 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 8800 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 270 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7990 should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 537600 (1400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be much (approximately 821%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 216800 (821%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 should be much (more or less 821%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54200 (821%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.