Radeon HD 4650 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot 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 should be much (approximately 340%) more effective 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by far. (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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.