Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 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 6950		3240 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 845 (35%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 89%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33200 (89%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a little bit (about 3%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past 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 type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.