Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 177% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 112448 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 238%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59480 (238%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (approximately 182%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18160 (182%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.