GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 295, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 6790 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89376 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be much (approximately 174%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58560 (174%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18816 (140%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.