Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 R9 270		5943 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 3548 (148%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be much (approximately 94%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34800 (94%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is superior to the Radeon HD 6850, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.