GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 is 400% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (more or less 323%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (323%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a lot (about 464%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (464%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure 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 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.