Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5670 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (approximately 140%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21700 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (more or less 300%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18600 (300%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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.