Radeon HD 5570 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 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 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (195%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5570 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (approximately 186%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24200 (186%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is much (more or less 377%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5570, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (377%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.