GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 comprised of 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 22512 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm will be much (more or less 23%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm will be a little bit (more or less 20%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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.