Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4730, which features a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4730 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be a lot (approximately 110%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11712 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (91%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.