Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 38% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 48896 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (more or less 69%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34480 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (more or less 41%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (41%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.