Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5670, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5670, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be much (about 61%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9500 (61%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be much (more or less 61%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (61%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of 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 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.