GeForce GTX 465 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 frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should be 25% faster than the GeForce GTX 465 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 25408 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (about 39%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10492 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (more or less 28%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 465, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5376 (28%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.