GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which features GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 30720 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is a little bit (more or less 17%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5568 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1248 (9%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.