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GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 has core clock speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be a lot (more or less 49%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by far. (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

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GeForce GTX 260

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 260 Radeon HD 7850
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year June 16, 2008 March 2012
Code Name G200 Pitcairn Pro
Memory 896 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 576 MHz 860 MHz
Memory Speed 1998 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 182 watts 130 watts
Bandwidth 111888 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 36864 Mtexels/sec 55040 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16128 Mpixels/sec 27520 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 192 1024
Texture Mapping Units 64 64
Render Output Units 28 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 448-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1400 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record 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 output 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 get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 260

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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