GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 is 150% faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be much (more or less 112%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (112%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is much (more or less 142%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (142%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 chip can possibly record 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.