Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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 7790		4330 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 1935 (81%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is much (more or less 51%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (more or less 55%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7790, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (55%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.