Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 theoretically perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be a lot (about 48%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, but not by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.