GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (186%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 262400 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (more or less 281%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94400 (281%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (433%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.