Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition
Summary
Reasons to consider Radeon HD 6850 |
| 48 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition . |
| Based on an outdated architecture (ATI TeraScale), there are no performance optimizations for current games and applications |
Reasons to consider Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition |
| 83% higher gaming performance. |
| This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support. |
| Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute |
| Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty) |
| Supports Mantle |
| Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications |
HWBench recommends Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition
The Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition is the better performing card based on the game benchmark suite used (40 combinations of games and resolutions).
Core Configuration
| Radeon HD 6850 | | Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | |
|---|
| GPU Name | Barts (Barts PRO) | vs | Pitcairn (Pitcairn XT) |
| Fab Process | 40 nm | vs | 28 nm |
| Die Size | 255 mm² | vs | 212 mm² |
| Transistors | 1,700 million | vs | 2,800 million |
| Shaders | 960 | vs | 1280 |
| Compute Units | 12 | vs | 20 |
| Core clock | 775 MHz | vs | 1000 MHz |
| ROPs | 32 | vs | 32 |
| TMUs | 48 | vs | 80 |
Memory Configuration
| Radeon HD 6850 | | Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | |
|---|
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | vs | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 256 bit | vs | 256 bit |
| Memory Speed | 1000 MHz
4000 MHz effective | vs | 1200 MHz
4800 MHz effective |
| Memory Size | 1024 Mb | vs | 2048 Mb |
Additional details
| Radeon HD 6850 | | Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | |
|---|
| TDP | 127 watts | vs | 175 watts |
| Release Date | 21 Oct 2010 | vs | 5 Mar 2012 |
GigaPixels - higher is better
GigaTexels - higher is better
GFLOPs - higher is better
Points (higher is better)
DX11, Ultra Quality,2x MSAA,16x AF, HBAO
FPS (higher is better)
DX11, Ultra Quality, 4xMSAA
FPS (higher is better)