Radeon HD 4770 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4770 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (about 252%) better at anisotropic 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 quite a bit (more or less 135%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4770, and also should be able to handle higher screen 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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.