In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon R7 260X Sapphire 2GB OC Edition are noticeably better than the AMD Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition.

The R7 260X has a 375 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 6850. This results in the R7 260X providing 27.2 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The R7 260X has a 375 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 6850, but the HD 6850 has 16 more Render Output Units than the R7 260X. As a result, the HD 6850 exhibits a 6.4 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the R7 260X. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The R7 260X was released over three years more recently than the HD 6850, and so the R7 260X is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the HD 6850 when running the latest games.

The R7 260X 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 22.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the R7 260X, which means that the memory performance of the HD 6850 is slightly better than the R7 260X.

The Radeon R7 260X Sapphire 2GB OC Edition has 896 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition has 960. However, the actual shader performance of the R7 260X is 876 and the actual shader performance of the HD 6850 is 372. The R7 260X having 504 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the R7 260X delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the HD 6850.

The R7 260X transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 6850. This means that the R7 260X is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 6850.

The Radeon R7 260X Sapphire 2GB OC Edition requires 120 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 6850 Sapphire 1GB Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the R7 260X and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6850. The two GPUs have been recommended a PSU with the same amount of wattage. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.