Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features GPU core speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 6970		3470 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 1075 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (about 127%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47280 (127%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be just a bit (more or less 14%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3360 (14%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.