GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 62 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is much (approximately 323%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (323%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (about 464%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 230, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (464%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.