GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a small bit (about 19%) more effective at texture filtering 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.