Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has a core clock speed 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 comprised of 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 4730		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 214%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48000 (214%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be much (approximately 357%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4730, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (357%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.