Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which features GPU clock speed of 1050 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, and 64 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 390X 8G		13555 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 11160 (466%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be a lot (about 397%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 147600 (397%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is much (more or less 171%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (171%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.