Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be 178% quicker than the Radeon HD 4730 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 214%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48000 (214%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (357%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.