GeForce GTX 590 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 specific model. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 4285 (179%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 238 Watts (187%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 will be 157% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 200320 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is a lot (about 109%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40496 (109%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be much (approximately 135%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33472 (135%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.