GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which features a clock speed of 575 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a lot (about 83%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a small bit (more or less 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.