In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the GTX 560 and the HD 6850 are equal.

The HD 6850 has a 223 MHz higher core clock speed and 4 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 560. This results in the HD 6850 providing 12.9 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 HD 6850 has a 223 MHz higher core clock speed but 8 fewer Render Output Units than the GTX 560. The lower ROP count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the HD 6850 manages to provide 2.7 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 was released over a year more recently than the HD 6850, and so the GTX 560 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 6850.

The GTX 560 has 256 MB more video memory than the HD 6850, so is likely to be slightly better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 560 also has superior memory performance overall.

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

The GeForce GTX 560 (OEM) has 384 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition has 960. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 560 is 424 and the actual shader performance of the HD 6850 is 372. The GTX 560 having 52 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the HD 6850 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The GeForce GTX 560 (OEM) requires 150 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 560 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6850. The HD 6850 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 560. The difference is significant enough that the HD 6850 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 560.