Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with core speeds of 918 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 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 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 5630 (196%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 285 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be much (about 104%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52416 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is a small bit (about 2%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 576 (2%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.