GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units 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 960		7627 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 5232 (218%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 will be 14% faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be much (more or less 94%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34928 (94%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (about 45%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (45%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.