Radeon HD 4830 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with a clock frequency 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 is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform much 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 should be much (approximately 283%) faster with regards to 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 is much (more or less 178%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also will be able to handle 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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.