GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a little bit (approximately 19%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (19%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.