GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular card. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 should be 133% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at AF. (explain)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (approximately 40%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (40%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (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 speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.