Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which features clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (about 94%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a small bit (about 16%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a 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 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.