Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 will be 178% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (more or less 283%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (283%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (178%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.