Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 112448 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 238%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.