GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which has core speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 119808 (208%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (about 128%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (128%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (about 265%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (265%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.