GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9488 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be much (about 92%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17664 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 is superior to the Radeon HD 4790, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (68%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.