GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a 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 made up of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a bit (approximately 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 600 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a small bit (approximately 15%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 can be applied per second. This figure 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.