GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a GPU core clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 will be 250% faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (approximately 282%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (282%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be quite a bit (about 205%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9040 (205%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a 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. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.