Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 is 152% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (more or less 182%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45400 (182%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (more or less 156%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (156%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.