Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 720(144x5) SPUs as well as 36 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		86 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 64 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		25200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a little bit (about 7%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		11200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 in a second.

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