GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (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 will be much (more or less 23%) faster with regards to texture 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a better choice, but only just. (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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.