Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 4670 512MB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (450%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (more or less 252%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60480 (252%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 369%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22160 (369%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.