GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7990, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency 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 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7990 should in theory be much superior to 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 will be much (approximately 2664%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, by far. (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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.