Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 5750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 720(144x5) SPUs along with 36 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be a bit (more or less 19%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.