Radeon HD 4650 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 1GB		55 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (355%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153600 (686%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 340%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65280 (340%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23360 (487%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.