Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which features clock speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be 84% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be just a bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2976 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much (approximately 132%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12176 (132%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.