Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5770, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5770 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 13248 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is much (about 36%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 should be quite a bit (more or less 36%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is 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 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 maximum fill rate.