GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform a lot faster 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 will be a little bit (about 19%) faster with regards to 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 AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.