GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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 much 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 (about 47%) more effective 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 is a lot (about 176%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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