GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs 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 860M		4340 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 1945 (81%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (182%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 is 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 860M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is much (approximately 106%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39312 (106%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (about 94%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12048 (94%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.