GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 992 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 will be quite a bit (approximately 36%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13440 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (approximately 40%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 275, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7076 (40%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.