Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon Sky 500

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon Sky 500, 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 6850 stacks up against Radeon Sky 500, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6850 Radeon Sky 500
Power consumption (TDP) 127 Watt 150 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1x 6-pin 1x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort 1x DisplayPort
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  • Radeon Sky 500 has 18% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 6850.
  • Radeon HD 6850 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon Sky 500 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon Sky 500 has 3 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 6850.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 6850 is build with TeraScale 2 architecture, and Radeon Sky 500 - with GCN 1.0.
  • Radeon HD 6850 is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon Sky 500 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Radeon Sky 500 is 44 mm longer, than Radeon HD 6850.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 9−10 35−40
ultra / 1080p 5−6 21−24
QHD / 1440p 0−1 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 21−24 60−65
medium / 1080p 12−14 40−45
The average gaming FPS of Radeon Sky 500 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 241% more, than Radeon HD 6850.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6850 Radeon Sky 500
Architecture TeraScale 2 GCN 1.0
Code name Barts Pitcairn
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 21 October 2010 27 March 2013
Pipelines 960 1280
Core clock speed 950 MHz
Transistor count 1,700 million 2,800 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 37.20 76.00
Floating-point performance 1,488.0 gflops 2,432 gflops
Length 198 mm 242 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 4800 MHz
Memory bandwidth 128.0 GB/s 154 GB/s
DirectX 12 (11_1)
Shader Model 5.0 5.1
OpenGL 4.4 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan 1.2.131
Bus support AGP PCIe 3.0
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 139 Mh/s
Eyefinity +
Design reference
CrossFire +
Form factor full height / full length
DisplayPort count 1
Dual-link DVI support +
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