GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7990, which comes with a clock frequency of 950 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7990 should be 2150% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 550400 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (about 2664%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 234400 (2664%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56400 (1282%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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