Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (28%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be much (about 76%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (60%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.