GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which features core speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 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 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 is 56% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be a small bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTX is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 360 (3%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.