GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 97 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 is 17% faster than the Radeon HD 7790 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be much (about 52%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19136 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be a little bit (approximately 1%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7790, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 many 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.