In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 6950 Sapphire 1GB Edition are noticeably better than the AMD Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition.

The HD 6950 has a 75 MHz higher core clock speed and 16 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 5850. This results in the HD 6950 providing 18.2 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 HD 6950 has a 75 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 5850 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the HD 6950 providing 2.4 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The HD 6950 was released over a year more recently than the HD 5850, and so the HD 6950 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 5850.

The Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition and the Radeon HD 6950 Sapphire 1GB Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The HD 6950 has 32 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the HD 5850, which means that the memory performance of the HD 6950 is noticeably better than the HD 5850.

The Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition has 1440 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 6950 Sapphire 1GB Edition has 1408. However, the actual shader performance of the HD 5850 is 522 and the actual shader performance of the HD 6950 is 563. The HD 6950 having 41 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 6950 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the HD 5850.

The Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition requires 151 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 6950 Sapphire 1GB Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 5850 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6950. 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.