GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 65920 (106%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is just a bit (more or less 12%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.