Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 26% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 32896 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (approximately 41%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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