Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (approximately 35%) better at AF 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 small bit (more or less 16%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.