Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 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 4730		140 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (approximately 257%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (257%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (about 471%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4730, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (471%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.