GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 will be 91% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (91%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB is quite a bit (about 41%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1632 (14%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.