Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380X, which has a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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 380X		9519 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 7124 (297%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380X is 43% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X is a lot (approximately 234%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86960 (234%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6240 (25%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, 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 AA, HDR 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.