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GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 has a GPU core clock speed of 576 MHz, and the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 999 MHz through a 448-bit bus. It also features 192 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 28 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which features core speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 should be 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be just a bit (approximately 10%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be a bit (more or less 20%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		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

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GeForce GTX 260

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Radeon HD 6790

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 6790
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	June 16, 2008	April 2011
Code Name	G200	Barts LE
Memory	896 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	576 MHz	840 MHz
Memory Speed	1998 MHz	4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	182 watts	150 watts
Bandwidth	111888 MB/sec	134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	36864 Mtexels/sec	33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16128 Mpixels/sec	13440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	192	800
Texture Mapping Units	64	40
Render Output Units	28	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	65 nm	40 nm
Transistors	1400 million	1700 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

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