GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which has core clock speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (91%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is much (about 41%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.