GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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 will be 5% quicker than the Radeon HD 6790 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be a lot (about 43%) better at texture filtering 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 should be quite a bit (more or less 43%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many 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.