GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features core clock 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)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (about 41%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18200 (276%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.