Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB is much (about 64%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23840 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (more or less 42%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 460 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (42%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.