Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be a lot (about 367%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70400 (367%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (167%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.