GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 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 works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. 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 GT 1GB DDR2		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 better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a lot (more or less 331%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28560 (331%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.