Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 470, which comes with a core clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1650 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 RX 470		11756 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 9361 (391%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 470 should be 65% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (65%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 will be much (more or less 219%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81328 (219%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4832 (19%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.