Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be much (more or less 141%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52400 (141%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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