Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 450% faster than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (approximately 252%) better at 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, by far. (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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.