Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 283%) more effective 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 running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, by far. (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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.