Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which features GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 70848 (111%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be much (more or less 34%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.