Radeon HD 4670 1GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 228800 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (about 393%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94400 (393%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (393%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.