Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (approximately 135%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40400 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (about 113%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (113%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.