GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 102 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (more or less 317%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58400 (317%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (109%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.