GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a small bit (about 11%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (158%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.