GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 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 GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (170%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (471%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (approximately 331%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28560 (331%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (about 474%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.