GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (more or less 244%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (244%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (about 359%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19400 (359%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.