GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 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 950		6536 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 4141 (173%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 22272 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be much (about 32%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11952 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be a lot (approximately 32%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7968 (32%)

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 max amount of information (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 interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.