GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 542 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 88 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5920 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a small bit (more or less 9%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3208 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a bit (about 2%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 520 (2%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.