GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 970M		7520 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 5125 (214%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should be 33% quicker than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit (approximately 99%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36720 (99%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (more or less 79%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19552 (79%)

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 moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.