GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be a little bit (more or less 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8768 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is much (approximately 36%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4192 (36%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.