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Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with clock speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB 110 Watts
Radeon HD 6790 150 Watts
Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 63552 MB/sec
Difference: 70848 (111%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be a lot (approximately 34%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 25000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 10000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 3440 (34%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4850 512MB Radeon HD 6790
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 April 2011
Code Name RV770 PRO Barts LE
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 625 MHz 840 MHz
Memory Speed 1986 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 110 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 63552 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 25000 Mtexels/sec 33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10000 Mpixels/sec 13440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 800
Texture Mapping Units 40 40
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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