Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The Radeon HD 5830, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than 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 will be just a bit (approximately 12%) more effective at AF 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.