GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be just a bit (about 11%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (158%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.