Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which features a core clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 94976 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is quite a bit (more or less 380%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 127680 (380%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be much (more or less 167%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (167%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.