GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has core clock speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8800 GS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 27%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (more or less 104%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GS, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6840 (104%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.