GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has core clock speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57984 (43%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 47%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15808 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 176%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23616 (176%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.