GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4790 should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX should be a lot (about 92%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTX is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (44%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 get to the maximum fill rate.