Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with core speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 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 6990		5820 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 620 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (85%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 245 Watts (188%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6990 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (approximately 190%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104320 (190%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (more or less 93%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7850, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (93%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.