Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is 56% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 267%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (267%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (167%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.