GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121376 (119%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be quite a bit (about 380%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72960 (380%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is superior to the Radeon HD 4790, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22656 (236%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.