Radeon HD 4830 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (about 283%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (283%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 178%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (178%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.