GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a bit (approximately 11%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4272 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (about 54%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8672 (54%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus 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 higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen 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 number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant 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.