GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which has 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 Stream Processors, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (86%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 will be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is much (about 29%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10960 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (approximately 29%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5536 (29%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.