Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 80% faster than the Radeon HD 5830 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (more or less 34%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (approximately 88%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (88%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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