GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 should in theory be just a 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 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 will be a lot (about 68%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be able to handle 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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.