Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5670, which comes with core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (310%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 63104 (99%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a lot (about 223%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34500 (223%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13800 (223%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.