Radeon HD 4350 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 129 Watts (586%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4350 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 126400 (1580%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (about 996%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45800 (996%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26500 (1152%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.