GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this model. 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 7296 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be quite a bit (about 43%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14560 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a lot (approximately 43%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5824 (43%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.