GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 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

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (more or less 29%) better at AF 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 a lot (more or less 29%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and capable of handling higher 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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.