Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1670 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 5500 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 101376 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is quite a bit (approximately 295%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109760 (295%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is superior to the Radeon HD 6850, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28640 (115%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.