Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which features core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (more or less 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (approximately 343%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (343%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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.