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GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 999 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 28 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4790, which has core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 260 will be 9% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be quite a bit (about 92%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be quite a bit (more or less 68%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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

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GeForce GTX 260

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4790

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 260 Radeon HD 4790
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year June 16, 2008 2009
Code Name G200 RV790
Memory 896 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 576 MHz 600 MHz
Memory Speed 1998 MHz 3200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 182 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 111888 MB/sec 102400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 36864 Mtexels/sec 19200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16128 Mpixels/sec 9600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 192 640(128x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 32
Render Output Units 28 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 448-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1400 million 959 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 260

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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