Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 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 R9 280X		8886 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 6491 (271%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be 125% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (more or less 192%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71600 (192%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the Radeon HD 6850, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.