Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 90048 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (more or less 120%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30040 (120%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17520 (175%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.