GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which features a clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 787 (37%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 should be 0% faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 480 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a little bit (approximately 1%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 392 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be a lot (more or less 81%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10840 (81%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant 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.