GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. 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 GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is much (about 48%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (more or less 98%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.