GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be quite a bit (about 27%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10032 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.