Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should be a small bit (approximately 8%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (more or less 55%) better at AA than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (55%)

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 across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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