During the production of silicon wafers and solar cells, a wafer’s surface is altered by different process steps, such as wire sawing or texturing. However, the surface not only influences a wafer’s mechanical and optical properties, but also that of the resulting solar cell. In these investigations, mechanical strength, reflectivity and surface roughness of four different types of wafers was measured and correlated to each other. Therefore, wafers processed by F600 and F1000 grain sized slurry based wire sawing were compared, whereas one half underwent a texturing step and the other half was left as-cut. Further, all parameters were analysed depending on their location between entry and exit of the sawing wire. Results show a clear dependence of fracture stress and roughness between different surface types, as well as between wire entry and exit of the wafer. Mechanical strength is significantly higher for F1000 sawn wafers (smaller SiC grain size) and increases after texturing step for both F600 and F1000 wafers. The mechanical strength differs locally on the wafer, increasing from sawing wire entry to exit. This effect can be observed for F600 and F1000 as well as for as-cut and texturized wafers. A correlation of decreasing roughness to increasing fracture strength can be made, which, however, only applies within a single type of surface. Reflectivity of wafers strongly depends on initial surface topology. Whereas etched F600 wafers show decreased reflectivity, reflectivity increases after F1000 wafer were etched, which needs to be considered for solar cell production.