Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 should be 88% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89856 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (approximately 571%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109568 (571%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be quite a bit (approximately 235%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22592 (235%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.