GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (182%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 is 900% faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (about 933%) better at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (933%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (1278%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.