GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units 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 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB is 24% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB is a lot (about 39%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14640 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a bit (about 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4064 (20%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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