GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 800 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be a lot (more or less 92%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17664 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot (about 68%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.