Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7950 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 176448 (278%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (about 258%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64600 (258%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (about 156%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (156%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.