Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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 HD 6870		2870 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 475 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be 5% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (about 35%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is just a bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.