GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9488 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm will be a lot (approximately 116%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22272 (116%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is quite a bit (about 68%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4790, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (68%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.