Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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 R7 260X		4381 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 1986 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is much (about 66%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the Radeon R7 260X, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (41%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.