Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which has core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7770 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit (about 60%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (60%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.