Radeon HD 4350 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 228 Watts (1036%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4350 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168000 (2100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 1737%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79880 (1737%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (approximately 1124%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4350, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25860 (1124%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.