Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be 10% faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be just a bit (approximately 12%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (79%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.