GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 is 56% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX is just a bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX is a small bit (more or less 3%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 360 (3%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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