Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (more or less 182%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45400 (182%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 156%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.