GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 942 (65%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (more or less 48%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12272 (98%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 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 reach the max fill rate.