Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 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 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 3995 (167%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (about 139%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51600 (139%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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