Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 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

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (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 (about 141%) more effective at texture 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

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a small bit (more or less 3%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.