Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform much 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 should be a lot (more or less 55%) more effective at 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.