GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs 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 is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be a lot (approximately 40%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.