Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5770 should be 21% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 13248 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is quite a bit (approximately 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is quite a bit (about 36%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (36%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.