GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with a core clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 57 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (about 243%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54400 (243%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (about 243%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4730, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (243%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.