Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB is a small bit (approximately 8%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (55%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock 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 memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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