Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with core 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 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 39% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (more or less 135%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40400 (135%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (113%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 processed 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 better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.