Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units 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 HD 6870		2870 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 475 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 5% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (more or less 35%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a little bit (about 16%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6850, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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