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Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The Radeon HD 4730 has a GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (approximately 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (about 129%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4730, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (129%)

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

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Radeon HD 4730

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Radeon HD 5830

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Specifications

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Model	Radeon HD 4730	Radeon HD 5830
Manufacturer	AMD	AMD
Year	Jun 8, 2009	February 25, 2010
Code Name	RV770/CE	Cypress LE
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	700 MHz	800 MHz
Memory Speed	3600 MHz	4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	140 watts	175 watts
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	22400 Mtexels/sec	44800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	5600 Mpixels/sec	12800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	640(128x5)	1120(224x5)
Texture Mapping Units	32	56
Render Output Units	8	16
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	956 million	2154 million
Bus	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

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