Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency 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 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5830 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (more or less 79%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (about 28%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.