GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 542 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 88 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5920 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a bit (more or less 9%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3208 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA 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 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 520 (2%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.