GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (170%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (approximately 331%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28560 (331%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (more or less 474%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20480 (474%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.