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Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

The Radeon HD 6850 features core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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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 R9 280X 8886 points
Radeon HD 6850 2395 points
Difference: 6491 (271%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850 127 Watts
Radeon R9 280X 250 Watts
Difference: 123 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be 125% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 160000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 192%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850 37200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 71600 (192%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850 24800 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 6850

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

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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 6850 Radeon R9 280X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year October 2010 October 2013
Code Name Barts Pro Tahiti XTL
Memory 1024 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 775 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 127 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 288000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 37200 Mtexels/sec 108800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 24800 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 960 2048
Texture Mapping Units 48 128
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1700 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 6850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280X

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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