Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 182400 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is quite a bit (approximately 387%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (387%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (more or less 178%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (178%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should 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 can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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