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Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 200 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 250 Watts
Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 127104 MB/sec
Difference: 32896 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 41%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 50000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20400 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 20000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5600 (28%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 7, 2008 December 2010
Code Name R700 Cayman Pro
Memory 512 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 625 MHz (x2) 800 MHz
Memory Speed 1986 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 127104 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 50000 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 20000 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 1408
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 88
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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