GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 Stream Processors, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be a bit (approximately 2%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 600 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a little bit (about 15%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.