Radeon HD 6850M vs Radeon HD 7970M

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6850M and Radeon HD 7970M, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 6850M stacks up against Radeon HD 7970M, check out specs charts below.

Radeon HD 6850M and Radeon HD 7970M are Laptop Graphics Cards

Note: Radeon HD 6850M and Radeon HD 7970M are only used in laptop graphics. They have lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon HD 6850M or Radeon HD 7970M here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6850M Radeon HD 7970M
Power consumption (TDP) 50 Watt 100 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 MXM-B (3.0)
Supplementary power connectors None
Memory type DDR3, GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Display Connectors No outputs No outputs
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  • Radeon HD 7970M has 100% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 6850M.
  • Radeon HD 6850M is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon HD 7970M uses MXM-B (3.0) interface.
  • Radeon HD 7970M has 1 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 6850M.
  • Both cards are used in Laptops.
  • Radeon HD 6850M is build with Terascale 2 architecture, and Radeon HD 7970M - with GCN.
  • Core clock speed of Radeon HD 7970M is 275 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 6850M.
  • Radeon HD 6850M is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 7970M - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 7970M is 4000 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 6850M.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 2−3 18−20
ultra / 1080p 0−1 10−12
QHD / 1440p 0−1 5−6
4K / 2160p 4−5
low / 720p 12−14 35−40
medium / 1080p 3−4 21−24
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7970M in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 333% more, than Radeon HD 6850M.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6850M Radeon HD 7970M
Architecture Terascale 2 GCN
Code name Granville Pro/LP Wimbledon XT
Type Laptop Laptop
Release date 6 January 2011 1 May 2012
Pipelines 800 1280
Core clock speed 575 / 675 MHz 850 MHz
Transistor count 1,040 million 2,800 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 27.00 68.00
Floating-point performance 1,080.0 gflops 2,176 gflops
Memory bus width 128 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 800 MHz 4800 MHz
Memory bandwidth 25.6 GB/s 153.6 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX 11.2 (11_0) 12 (11_1)
Shader Model 5.0 5.1
OpenGL 4.4 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan N/A 1.2.131
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 254 Mh/s
Laptop size large large
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