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GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 has a GPU clock speed of 576 MHz, and the 896 MB of GDDR3 memory is set to run at 999 MHz through a 448-bit bus. It also is comprised of 192 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that 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 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 is 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is just a bit (approximately 10%) more effective at anisotropic 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 should be a bit (approximately 20%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling 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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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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