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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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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 be much 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 will be a small bit (approximately 11%) better at anisotropic filtering 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 using 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

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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6850

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GT 1GB Radeon HD 6850
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year July 2008 October 2010
Code Name G92a/b Barts Pro
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz 775 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 105 watts 127 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 33600 Mtexels/sec 37200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 9600 Mpixels/sec 24800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 112 960
Texture Mapping Units 56 48
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65/55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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