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Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (about 76%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 60%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 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

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Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4890 2GB Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 2, 2009 December 2010
Code Name RV790 XT Cayman Pro
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 3900 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 190 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 124800 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 40000 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16000 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1408
Texture Mapping Units 40 88
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 959 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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