Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this model. It features 720(144x5) SPUs along with 36 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		86 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5750 1GB should be 16% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 10048 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5750 1GB is just a bit (more or less 1%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		25200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5750 1GB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		11200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (12%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 maximum fill rate.