GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (320%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be quite a bit (approximately 41%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one 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 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.