Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5670, which features a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 400(80x5) SPUs, 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 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5670 should be 1% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 61%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9500 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.