GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (144%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 315 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 102720 (406%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is much (approximately 272%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27200 (272%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (approximately 396%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 315, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (396%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.