Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 57 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a lot (more or less 55%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (about 313%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (313%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.