Radeon HD 4770 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a core clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 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 4770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4770 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (244%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 252%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60480 (252%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (approximately 135%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4770, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (135%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 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 can 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 ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on many 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.