Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has core clock speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 2805 (117%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot (about 48%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17840 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a bit (about 11%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (11%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.