Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be much (approximately 79%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (28%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.