GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 560		3030 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 635 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 560 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be much (about 22%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is a bit (about 5%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1120 (5%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.