Radeon HD 4830 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (more or less 283%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (283%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (about 178%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock 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 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 also depends on quite a few 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.