GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which features core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a lot (approximately 27%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10032 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12992 (110%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.