Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (approximately 192%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a small bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

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