GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be just a bit (approximately 19%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8768 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be much (about 36%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.