In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition are significantly better than the AMD Radeon HD 8740 (OEM).

The HD 8740 has a 25 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 6850, but the HD 6850 has 16 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 8740. As a result, the HD 6850 exhibits a 11.6 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the HD 8740. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 8740 has a 25 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 6850, but the HD 6850 has 16 more Render Output Units than the HD 8740. As a result, the HD 6850 exhibits a 12 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the HD 8740. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The HD 8740 was released over a year more recently than the HD 6850, and so the HD 8740 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 6850.

The HD 8740 has 1024 MB more video memory than the HD 6850, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, the overall memory performance is about the same.

The HD 6850 has 56 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the HD 8740, which means that the memory performance of the HD 6850 is much better than the HD 8740.

The Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition has 960 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 8740 (OEM) has 512. However, the actual shader performance of the HD 6850 is 372 and the actual shader performance of the HD 8740 is 348. The HD 6850 having 24 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 6850 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the HD 8740.

The HD 8740 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 6850. This means that the HD 8740 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 6850.

The Radeon HD 8740 (OEM) requires 55 Watts to run but there is no entry for the HD 6850. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6850 and a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the HD 8740. The HD 6850 has been recommended a PSU with 100 Watts more than the HD 8740. The difference is significant enough that the HD 6850 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the HD 8740.