GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which features GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6790 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 7296 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 43%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14560 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a lot (more or less 43%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5824 (43%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.