GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 260 should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (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%) better at anisotropic filtering 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 should be a bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7790, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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 a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.