GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 41712 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot (about 49%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18176 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11392 (71%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.