Radeon HD 5570 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 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 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (195%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6850 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5570 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (approximately 186%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24200 (186%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (377%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.