GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 will be 9% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9488 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is quite a bit (approximately 116%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22272 (116%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 will be quite a bit (about 68%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (68%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It 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 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.