Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is quite a bit (more or less 267%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (267%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 167%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4790, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (167%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.