Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5750 1GB

Intro

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

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		30 FPS
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		26 FPS
	Difference: 4 FPS (15%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		47 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		40 FPS
	Difference: 7 FPS (18%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		60 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		55 FPS
	Difference: 5 FPS (9%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		57 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		54 FPS
	Difference: 3 FPS (6%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		59 FPS
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		59 FPS
	Difference: 0 FPS (0%)

Left4Dead 2

Settings:	Very High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		67 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		59 FPS
	Difference: 8 FPS (14%)

Mass Effect 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	none
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		70 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		69 FPS
	Difference: 1 FPS (1%)

Supreme Commander 2

Settings:	High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		50 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		46 FPS
	Difference: 4 FPS (9%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		25 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		24 FPS
	Difference: 1 FPS (4%)

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		30 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		29 FPS
	Difference: 1 FPS (3%)

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Radeon HD 5750 1GB wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 5750 1GB wins overall, by 26 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		491 FPS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		465 FPS
	Difference: 26 FPS (6%)

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		86 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5750 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 10048 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5750 1GB will be a little bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		25200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5750 1GB is just a bit (about 12%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		11200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (12%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.