GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 62 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (approximately 323%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (323%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (more or less 464%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 230, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (464%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 per 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.