Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 184 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 192448 (303%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (more or less 828%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 207000 (828%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 82800 (828%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.