Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which features core clock speeds of 950 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 HD 7990		15520 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 13125 (548%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 248 Watts (195%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 448000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (about 554%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 206000 (554%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is much (about 145%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36000 (145%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.