GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs 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 is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 992 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 will be much (about 36%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13440 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7076 (40%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.