GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which has GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 260 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is much (about 92%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17664 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of 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 number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.