GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4790, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4790 should be a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX should be a lot (approximately 92%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTX is superior to the Radeon HD 4790, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (44%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.