GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is a small bit (more or less 11%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4272 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (about 54%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8672 (54%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This is worked out 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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