GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a small bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (more or less 138%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (138%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.