Radeon HD 4670 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 is 282% quicker than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (282%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (more or less 110%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (380%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This is calculated 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.