GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (218%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (about 615%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (615%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (about 854%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (854%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.