GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. 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 be 50% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (approximately 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 is much (about 49%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6850, and should be able to handle higher screen 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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a 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 - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.