GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 119808 (208%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (approximately 128%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (128%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a lot (about 265%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.