Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a little bit (approximately 12%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (12%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is quite a bit (approximately 25%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.