Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 4195 (175%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X is 40% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (more or less 115%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42800 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (29%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.