GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 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 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 7790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be quite a bit (approximately 35%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14528 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is superior to the Radeon HD 7790, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128 (1%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.