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Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB features a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB 110 Watts
Radeon HD 6970 250 Watts
Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB 63552 MB/sec
Difference: 112448 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 238%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB 25000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 59480 (238%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB 10000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 18160 (182%)

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

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Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4850 2GB Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 December 2010
Code Name RV770 PRO Cayman XT
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 625 MHz 880 MHz
Memory Speed 1986 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 110 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 63552 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 25000 Mtexels/sec 84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10000 Mpixels/sec 28160 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1536
Texture Mapping Units 40 96
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR4 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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