Radeon HD 4650 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised 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 4650 512MB		55 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (355%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (1000%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (approximately 340%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65280 (340%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 487%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23360 (487%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.