GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a small bit (more or less 1%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 336 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.