Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 5255 (219%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 should be 50% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64256 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (approximately 246%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91568 (246%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be much (more or less 30%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7392 (30%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.