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Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 5850 comes with clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 200 Watts
Difference: 49 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (more or less 35%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 18200 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2400 (10%)

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

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 30, 2009 December 2010
Code Name Cypress PRO Cayman Pro
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 151 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 52200 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 23200 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1440(288x5) 1408
Texture Mapping Units 72 88
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.2 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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