Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (about 491%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90400 (491%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18000 (196%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

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