GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform 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 should be a lot (about 48%) faster with regards to 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 (about 98%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: 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 worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.