Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4730, which has GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4730 should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be much (about 110%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11712 (110%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 91%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.