GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should be 122% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a lot (more or less 79%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is much (more or less 138%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (138%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.