GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, 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 880M		6360 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 3965 (166%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be much (approximately 228%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84912 (228%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5728 (23%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.