Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 680		7650 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 2450 (47%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 will be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38656 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit (approximately 134%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73728 (134%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4672 (17%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.