Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 233%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (233%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26000 (433%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.