Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot (approximately 172%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33000 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (more or less 142%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4790, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (142%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.