GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 is 18% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a little bit (approximately 19%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a small bit (about 19%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (19%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few 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.