GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which features core clock 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4790 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (28%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 will be much (approximately 76%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14656 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 will be much (more or less 76%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7328 (76%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.