GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 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 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 11157 (466%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be quite a bit (more or less 287%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 106928 (287%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (about 191%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47264 (191%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number 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 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many 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.