GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have the exact same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be quite a bit (approximately 40%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.