Radeon HD 4770 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4770 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (244%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (more or less 252%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60480 (252%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 135%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4770, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (135%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 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 max fill rate.