GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with core 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 580		4956 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 2561 (107%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 117 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64384 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is much (more or less 33%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12208 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (about 49%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6850, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12256 (49%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.