GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7990, which has a GPU core clock speed of 950 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 550400 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is quite a bit (about 2664%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 234400 (2664%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.