GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 151 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 will be 48% quicker than the Radeon HD 7790 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 45696 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be just a bit (about 16%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7840 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 7790, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (20%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.