Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

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

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (approximately 140%) faster with regards to 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 300%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.