Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 673%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 202000 (673%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (about 673%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80800 (673%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.