In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Gainward Phantom 2GB Edition are noticeably better than the AMD Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition.

The GTX 560 Ti has a 47 MHz higher core clock speed and 16 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 6850. This results in the GTX 560 Ti providing 15.4 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 560 Ti has a 47 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 6850 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 560 Ti providing 1.5 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 560 Ti was released less than a year after the HD 6850, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The GTX 560 Ti has 1024 MB more video memory than the HD 6850, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 560 Ti also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 560 Ti has 0.3 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the HD 6850, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 560 Ti is marginally better than the HD 6850.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti Gainward Phantom 2GB Edition has 384 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition has 960. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 560 Ti is 631 and the actual shader performance of the HD 6850 is 372. The GTX 560 Ti having 259 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 560 Ti delivers a slightly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the HD 6850.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti Gainward Phantom 2GB Edition requires 170 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 560 Ti and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6850. The two GPUs have been recommended a PSU with the same amount of wattage. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.