Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 359%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66080 (359%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18960 (206%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.