Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 6970		3470 points
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 1075 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 127%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47280 (127%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3360 (14%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.