Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5670, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5670 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be much (approximately 61%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9500 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 5670, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (61%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.