GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. 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)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (170%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (471%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is much (more or less 331%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28560 (331%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (approximately 474%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20480 (474%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.