GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 will be 122% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a little bit (more or less 11%) better at AF 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

The Radeon HD 6850 is a lot (about 158%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.