Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with 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 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

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 283%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (approximately 178%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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