GeForce RTX 3090 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a core clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce RTX 3090		350 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (169%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce RTX 3090 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		958668 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 805068 (524%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3090 is much (approximately 731%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 402520 (731%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3090 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128720 (468%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen 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 amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.