Radeon HD 4650 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 1GB		55 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 239 Watts (435%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 1043% quicker than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 233600 (1043%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 1108%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 212800 (1108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (more or less 1833%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 88000 (1833%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.