Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 R9 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 10338 (432%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390 8G is 200% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (about 330%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122800 (330%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the Radeon HD 6850, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (158%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number 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 video 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 chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.