Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with GPU core speed of 918 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 R9 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 3300 (63%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 285 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7850 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is a lot (more or less 87%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47776 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 285 is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (7%)

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 over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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