GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7790, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be a bit (more or less 19%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8768 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is much (more or less 36%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4192 (36%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.