Radeon HD 4350 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (477%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4350 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120000 (1500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (more or less 709%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32600 (709%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22500 (978%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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