GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. 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)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be just a bit (approximately 2%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 800 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a bit (about 19%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.