Radeon HD 4670 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (336%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (about 233%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (233%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in one second.

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