GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a core clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 22512 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a lot (about 23%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a small bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2688 (20%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.