Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (approximately 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (343%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.