Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (more or less 49%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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