GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which has GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 960 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 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 will be a lot (approximately 323%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.